Resupply
by HackWriterAccount
Summary: A battered Imperial fleet makes a blind jump into a distant backwater (Rated M for strong Language and Violence in later chapters)
1. Chapter 1

AN: I know I'm taking some liberties here (What with the whole far away and long time ago thing, plus an Earth with no Star Wars) but dangit, this is a story I've had cooking for a while. So for the sake of consistency, the Sol system is now someplace deep within Wild Space. (That does mean this is in the old Legends EU, as well)

 _Resupply – A fanfic_

 _It is an age of great turmoil_

 _Forces of the fledgling NEW REPUBLIC strike against the remains of the GALACTIC EMPIRE_

 _While bold members of the IMPERIAL REMNANT strive to keep their fleets together_

 _Former Moffs and Admirals turned WARLORDS tear it apart from within_

 _With the self proclaimed WARLORDS fighting their own, the IMPERIAL CIVIL WAR takes it's toll_

 _After a disastrous engagement with the WARLORD ZSINJ, a single Remnant fleet makes a blind jump_

 _into hyperspace..._

 _ABY, Hyperspace_

The thrum of Hyperspace did little to drown out the background groaning of klaxons sounding through every deck. The bridge was awash with activity, crewmen dousing electrical fires where they could and whatever spare hands available crewing critical navigational consoles.

The last engagement had left the ISD Indomitable badly scarred, it's Navcomputer completely fried, along with who knows how many subsystems. Only frantic calculations using flimsiplast maps of galactic hyperspace routs and rudimentary comms enabled Her and Her attendant ships - small fleet consisting of a single ISD, two mothballed Venators pressed into service and a single Escort Carrier – to make the jump into hyperspace, blindly following what a junior officer _thought_ was the Corellian Run. With luck, they'd drop out above some Outer Rim hellhole and be set to repair and resupply, ready to rejoin the rest of the Remnant in their fight against the New Republic and the rising Warlords.

At least, that's what Captain Arksend thought. Such as he was, hunched over an intercomm system personally directing fire control crews to critical systems. He knew, deep in the back of his mind, that a poorly calculated jump was just as bad as a blind one. The thought gnawed on him, making him pause for a second. _If a single parsec was off, we could drop out into the heart of a star, or inside a planet._ But an urgent call from the engineering crew shook him back to reality. If all else failed, if they jumped somewhere uncharted, they could at least strip mine whatever planets for necessary materials.

The thought gave him some comfort.

 _VSD Liberator, Hyperspace_

Lieutenant Tymon once again slammed his forehead, a gesture that the remaining command staff was growing accustomed to.

"He ordered a _what_?" His voice was flat, and yet it carried and edge that made the rest of the staff's blood run cold.

"Y-yes, sir. It appears that Captain Arksend ordered this jump...without proper navigational assistance."

Lt. Tymon nearly launched himself upright from the table, pacing the head of the conference table with slow determination. "Damn that man to the Nine Hells, I was under the impression we were jumping along the Corellian run."

The junior officer swallowed, hard. After the death of their more level-headed Captain in battle, the fiery Corellian Lieutenant had taken no time in establishing a Command filled with passionate outbursts.

"It...ah...it seems, sir, that with most of the fleet severely damaged this was the best course of action."

Tymon stopped to rub at the stubble on his chin, another thing he had changed during his command. "Mmm. Fair point. Fleet mission killed in most ways, no way out..." He let out a deep sigh. "Best way to keep whomever was left alive. Still, what a bastard. I've got fingers crossed that we at _least_ drop out somewhere inhabited. Might as well have blind jumped us into a black hole."

 _March 2nd, 2015 Lyndon B. Jonson Space Center_

"Uuuuuhhhhh, boss, you might want to come see this!"

"What am I looking at?"

"The ISS just picked up a _massive_ burst of multi-spectrum radiation. X-rays, Gamma, you name it. Here's the kicker, it's _inside_ the solar system, they roughly estimate somewhere between Jupiter and Saturn."

"And?"

"And...well, we got something new in our neighborhood. Looks like someone's popped in for a chat."

 _March 2nd, Location Classified_

 _"_ Hello, Commander. In light of the recent unknown excursion into the Solar System, this Council of Nations has convened to approve the activation of the Xcom Project. You have been chosen to lead this initiative, to oversee our first and _last_ line of defense, should the unknown excursion prove hostile. Your efforts will have considerable influence on this planets future, we _urge_ you to keep that in mind as you proceed. _**Good luck, Commander.**_

AN: Oh snap, it's actually an Xcom/Star Wars Crossover!


	2. Chapter 2

_Resupply – A fanfic, Ch. 2_

 _ABY, Unknown System_

Captain Arksend was astonished they'd even made it this far. Multiple systems offline, a ship scarred by battle, and yet, here they were. On the edge of who knows which system, alive and intact, for the most part. He made a mental note to write a personal commendation for whichever of the bridge crew had made the initial calculation, along with doubling the weekly alcohol ration of the entire crew.

"Ensign, what do we know about the system we're in?"

"Not much, sir. Sensors are nearly inopperable, all we have is short range, showing two gas giants." A nervous looking Ensign spoke up from one of the recessed workstations on the bridge. "If I may, sir, comms are working well enough to allow for probe droid scouting. Shall I order it?"

With a curt not from the Captain, he busied himself in coordinating with the droid workshop on board for full deployment. It wasn't an ideal spot, stuck between two gas giants, but a full probe scan could give them valuable information. Resource deposits, planetary makeup, even enough data to roughly pinpoint where they were on a map. Arksend dove back into his spots, letting the white noise of thrumming engines, _A dull throb, one isn't at full power_ , and the twinkling background of space gave him clarity to think, to move two steps ahead of the current crisis.

A junior officer shook him from state of thinking, Arksend recognized him as being from the Comm section.

"Sir, may I have a word?"

With a nod and gesture, Arksend directed the both of them to the back of the bridge. A handful of eyes turned to watch them and even more cocked their heads to eavesdrop. To the bridge crew, any news from Comms was like a drop of water in the desert.

The Comms officer cleared his throat when they reached the rear and presented a datapad. "I didn't want to bring this up in front of the crew, sir, but we've picked up...well, we're not sure what it is."

Captain Arksen scrolled through the contents of datapad, a mostly dry report consisting of various time logs of whatever abnormal signal the Communication section had picked up, mostly background radiation. But towards the end several audio files were flagged for review. With a nod of dismissal to the Ensign, Arksend hit the playback option and heard...

Music.

Laughter.

An alien language so similar to his own, and yet, different. Coarse and sharp, scrolling through each flag, _varied._ A slow smile spread across his face. Wherever they were, there was sentient life. And sentient life meant help, workers, resources, _recruits_. 

_March 5th 2015, LBJ Space Center_

"So...what are you telling me? Little green men are here to visit?"

The government attache was a stern man, thuroughly made of no-nonsense federal steel.

"Well...no, I mean, we don't know if they're little or green or..." The tech began, only to be cut off by the federal official leaning forward, a stern look on his face.

"Listen, if SETI had come up with this I'd brush it off. But this is coming from you guys, so you better be _damn_ sure you've got something that's not a microwave in a lab." The threat was clear and audible, no matter how much couching it had.

"Alright, let me just...uh...bring it up, here." The tech tapped furiously away at a tablet before sliding it across the table. "You know the Juno probe? Launched early, was supposed to observe Jupiter and such, well... when the ISS picked up that radiation burst we re-tasked it to look at the source. See if it was just a glitch or something, y'know?"

He waited for the attache to pick up the tablet, and wasn't surprised when he gave it a bored once over.

"So I'm looking at some weird asteroids, so what?" The attache not-so-gently shoved it back at the tech. "Radioactive or some other nerdy shit."

"If you'd let me finish," The tech slid the tablet back to the attache. "Nature doesn't make straight lines, especially in space. Those things there, they're not natural."

This time, the attache actually took more than a glance at the image on the screen. In it, a blurry cluster of three gray wedges and an equally gray lump sat among a field of stars.

"And here's the thing, the probe? It's picked up radio transmissions _from_ them. Not just random junk from something radioactive but actual _communication._ They send something out, and we hear a response. Do you know what this means?"

For once, the attache didn't try to dominate the room with his posture, instead slightly leaning forward to listen.

"We've got first contact here! Aliens, in our solar system! Can you imagine that?"

The attache withdrew back into his persona, collecting his things for a nearby chair. "I can now, thank you for your time."

 _March 5th 2015, Too Early O'Clock, 32nd Street Naval Station_

"The fuck you mean we're going on alert? What, goddamn aliens gonna storm the fleet?"


	3. Chapter 3

AN: For some reason keeps chopping off the date for ABY, so in case my edits aren't going through this story is set 4.7 ABY

 _"...And that's it for this week's weather, looks like another perfect spring across the country. Those of you night owls with no cloud cover miiiight want to take a look up at about 11 PM eastern, it looks like we're in for a pretty spectacular meteor shower visible across the country. You can submit pictures and follow along at hash tag..."_

ORIBITAL ENTRY DETECTED

BEGIN POWERUP

POWER SUPPLY...OK

DEFENSIVE SYSTEMS...OK

SELF DESTRUCT...OK

LOW POWER COMMUNICATIONS...EST. 30M DELAY

HIGH POWER COMMUNICATIONS...0S DELAY

MANIPULATOR APPENDAGES...OK

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES

ASSESS LOCAL INFRASTRUCTURE

DETERMINE LEVEL OF TECHNOLOGY

SELF-TERMINATE IF CAPTURE IMMINENT

ALERT. IMPACT IMMINENT.

.

.

.

VP-213 PLANETFALL COMPLETE

BEGINNING OBSERVATION

The pod casing opened with the help of explosive bolts, releasing the probe droid into the open air. It let out a single high power burst to confirm it had safely impacted, then switched to a lower power for it's observation. With a hum of it's repulsor engine, it drifted across the hilly terrain, taking a sample of the atmosphere as it went.

ATMO REPORT AS FOLLOWS -

N...78%

O2...21%

AR... .9%

CO2... .04%

TRACE OTHER GAS

WARNING!

ELEVATED LEVEL OF GREENHOUSE GAS CONSISTENT WITH HYDROCARBON BASED PROPULSION

MISSION OBJECTIVE 1 & 2 COMPLETE

PROCEED ON MISSION Y/N?

 _Tranquility Nodule, International Space Station, Earth Orbit. Early morning March 7h 2015_

"Say again?" 

June Rodriguez was becoming increasingly frustrated with LBJ, near every single communication with them had her repeating the same statement over and over, ad naseum.

"Yes, yes, I'm absolutely sure it wasn't a meteoroid. What do you mean _how_ do I know it wasn't? _Meteoroids don't change course._ " 

Two hours ago, she was sure she was going to die. Every bit of data they had suggested that the meteor shower was coming in high and, sadly, they were in the cross hairs. Another crew etched on the memorial wall. And so, they had waited, knowing at that point in the time they would go down in history...just in more ways than one. As the first crew to be put into orbit following the end of STS-135 and the Space Shuttle program, they had already made a solid mark on the history books, and now? Now they would make another.

Or so they thought.

The meteorite shower, the one that had come out of nowhere, the one freak occurrence that just _had_ to end the ISS...redicrected Where once there would have been a death toll in a dozen plus and untold numbers of satellites hammered to pieces, the meteorites made sudden course adjustments, nimbly dodging the obstacles in their path (For hunks of god-knows-what hurtling towards a planet) and continuing their descent.

And for the briefest moment, just a split second, June caught a glimpse of one of those glowing streaks and thought she saw...lines? Regular formations on it surface? Bursts of gas from vents? Who could say. Maybe it was the near death experience messing with her, stress hormones and years spent being a scientist searching for any rational explaination for it, trying to process a serious brush with morality in a way she could comprehend.

"I'm still here, thinking back." June paused for a second to come up with something palatable. "No, I _do not_ need a mental eval right now, what I've been saying is that these things made last minute adjustments. I don't know, you really think I want to pull the ET thing? Fine, you want science, bursts of gas from it's surface as it entered the atmosphere. No, I know it won't stand up under serious review, but unless you keep this in-house, it'll never go under serious review, will it? Yeah, I know. Love you too, Houston, be good." She signed off with her usual greeting.

"Assholes." June muttered under her breath, sending the headset spinning down the tube of the nodule.

 _ISD Indomitable, between gas giant's dubbed Sol-5 and Sol-6_

The crew was assembled in as neat ranks as the bridge allowed, a sort of gentle sloping that made the most of various consoles on the edge of various depression. Captain Arksend quietly paced in front of the bridge staff, a finger and thumb on his chin.

"As you may have guessed by this assembly, we have the atmospheric data from the probes, and..." He paused for theatrical emphasis, making motions of scrolling through the data pad along with as many contorted faces his own long face could pull off. "Nitrogen at seventy eight percent, oh..." He dropped his voice dramatically, feigning disappointment.

"Oxygen at twenty one percent! Now, that means some of you might feel a slight buzz," A small chuckle ran through the crew members born on low 02 world. "But we've found it. Somewhere far from home to resupply and return to the Empire we know!"

As the bridge staff cheered and embraced one another, he felt a slight pang in his chest.

 _Two hours earlier, Captain's Quarters._

"No, sir, this planet is perfectly habitable, bu-"

The intel officer was silenced with a slice of Cpt. Arksend's hand.

"Habitable, with a sentient population and a resource rich solar system? With this we could rest, repair, _go home._ A small exchange, and they would probably be eager to assist us in our repairs, maybe even replenish our enlisted corps. Who knows."

From his Quarters, he could see most of the internal hull. While classic Tarkin doctirne promoted domination over all, the quarters of it's commanding officers promoted nothing more than humility. With a wide swath of Transpartisteel, the Captain could observe everything and feel how small yet influential they were in the scope of things. Stormtroopers drilling on open decks, fighters launching into combat with some of their number never to return, the scars of combat barely sealed by various bits of shielding...

"We need this, we need _them_ to go home again," Arksend began, "Our crew compliment is built towards waging war, and I will not impose upon them to become miners and farmers. If we could enlist the assistance of the senti-"

The Intel officer interrupted him by projecting dozens of images across the Captain's desk. In them, a multitude of sentients had engaged the probes in combat, weilding anywhere from makeshift melee weapons to angled weapons of war.

"It would appear, sir, that the sentients of this planet are incredibly hostile to outside life. We've already lost contact with multiple probe units, and we believe Viper Probe 213 has actively engaged the local military presence"

 _A remote hill, Camp Pendleton, California_

"So...uh...the fuck am I looking?"

A small batch of MP's had surrounded the bulky metal object, a mix of shotguns and rifles pointed at it.

"Si-...uh...Sergeant!" One the younger MP's had gone from a salute to parade rest in the blink of an eye. "It's..uh..."

"Lemme guess, some kinda probe from space." Sergeant Penske spat a stream of dip spit _just_ shy of the MP. "And we're here to gun it down if it tries the whole "You will be assimilated" shit, right?"

The young MP gulped and nodded.

"Look, kiddo, just stay back and watch it, I mean, look at us." Penske gestured around them. Rolling hills and California scrubland stretched for miles "What's it gonna do, tell our Reptilian overlords that there's nothing but brush and guys with guns?"

"I-" The MP began, only to be drowned out by a sharp alarm.

One of the MP's, someone even younger than the one Penske was talking too, leveled his rifle at the floating metal object. It reached out with a single pincer tipped arm and gripped the barrel of the rifle before giving it a tug, and a sharp crack rolled through the hills.

The floating metal object reeled back with a sharp chunking of machinery ground to a halt, then let out a piercing wail of an alarm. And all hell broke loose.

It fired some kind of red bolt into the MP that had lost her trigger discipline and left her torso a smoking heap. In response, Seargent Penske reacted the way mutliple tours downrange had taught him to. " _ **LIGHT IT THE FUCK UP!**_ "

About a dozen small arms roared in compliance, filling the metal thing with as much ammunition as they could. It wobbled a bit, drifting heavy towards the ground before the high whine of electronics frying and the chunking of metallic objects crashing together sent it up in a fireball.

Penske dared a peek from under his helmet, observing multiple MP's clutching various shrapnel wounds. A crater no more than a meter deep remained where the metal object had floated, tendrils of smoke curling from a corpse just inches from the crater.

"Oh, great, perfect fuckin' way to end my week."

AN: Sorry for the short chapters, still finding my groove for this story! Also, there won't be any updates until 6th Jan, so hold on until then! Also, sorry for the extra language, but in my experience, Penske wouldn't be a real Marine without it :P


	4. Chapter 4

_AN: Here it is! Sorry it's a bit late, flights got delayed due to storms!_

 _ISD Indomitable, Mars orbit_

The Commanding Officers from each division sat idle in the Captain's briefing room, washing the stark grey and black confines with various hushed conversations all about the same thing – the sentients of the solar system. More rumor than actual fact, the conversations veered wildly from troglodytes swarming the probes with clubs to a hidden Jedi Enclave that survived the purge of their Order. The hushed tones grew louder as each CO and their retinue introduced their pet rumor to another, with various wild gestures and raised voices trying to convey that no, _their_ rumor was probably the closest to the truth.

Arksend watched the scene unfold with small bit of amusement, even here, who knows how many lightyears from home, the military rumor mill was churning full strength. He silenced the room with a sharp cough, then approached his terminal and punched in a series of commands. A holo of the sentient's homeworld flickered into life above the center of the table, showcasing a world swathed with oceans. Glowing points orbited the world, each tagged with generic statements. "Communications", "Research" "Manned platform".

"Gentlemen, I've called you all here to bring you up to date with our current state of intel. This world, which we have dubbed Sol-3, is inhabited by an early space flight, pre-hyper drive sentient species," With another set of commands, Arksend brought up a series of holos, some stills, others full motion. One theme carried through almost each holo, the probe is attacked by sentients and is either destroyed or initiates it's own self-destruct.

"Over eighty percent of our probes were assaulted and destroyed. This leads me to the conclusion that the populace of Sol-3 is both highly aggressive and extremely xenophobic, with all appearances indicating them to be, at least, Near-Human"

A murmur ran through the assembled officers. Arksend waited for the soft chatter to die down before bringing up another set of holos, this one displaying various forms of weaponry.

"From all the intelligence our probes have gathered, it seems this sentient species is uniformly armed – a variety of hand-held slugthrowers mixed in with crude melee weaponry. With their pre-hyperspace space flight, they pose little threat to us militarily. And with diplomacy off the table due to their aggression, that leaves us with two options."

Arksend paused for dramatic effect, watching as the CO's leaned forward to better hear him.

"We force their assistance through one of two things – a show of force, or full on invasion."

 _Oval office, The White House, March 10th 2015_

"As you can see, Mister President, I've assembled a comprehensive security report on these...probes." Terry Parker wanted to gag on those words. It wasn't often he was wrong, and here he was, having dropped the biggest ball of all time in not believing some low level NASA nerd. And here he was, with the same tech and countless pages of a security review in front of the President. "It appears they arrived through some sort of orbital delivery system, and when confronted the probes retaliated with lethal force."

The President idly flipped through the report, lingering on the accounts of them firing on military and police, then shut it with a clap of thick paper. "So there is absolutely, without a shred of doubt, no way we provoked them? Because I have a raw report from Camp Pendleton here in my desk," He reached into a drawer and dropped a slim folder onto his desk with a flop, turning to the middle section. "And it says, I quote, 'Provoked hostile reaction from unknown force through ND.' A negligent discharge, Terry. Does that sound like we didn't do a thing?"

Terry swallowed, hard. He'd be caught spinning the truth, _in front of the fuckin' POTUS_. "Mister President, if you'll look at more of the report you'll see that these probes were found in multiple high security areas, and..."

He was shut down when the President looked to the NASA tech. "Mister Corrville, you said you had an idea earlier?"

Ned Corrville blinked in surprise, five days ago he was giving blurry images to some faceless attache, and now he was here, _here!_ , in the Oval Office! "W-well, Mister O-, ah, Mister President, Sir, I don't have a doorstopper of a folder, but..I've got a theory." With a nod from the president, he continued. "Probes, right? Who knows where our visitors come from, what their society is like! So to them, arming probes might be like..I dunno, our putting goodwill messages on extrasollar probes. Maybe we seek contact, but they seek to find threats, or something? But that doesn't matter, especially after you said that they only _acted_ when someone else acted _first_. In other words, _self defense._ For all we know, they're not hostile at all, and we might've just ruined our chances at peaceful first contact!"

With a sigh, the President massaged his forehead. "Well that's good news for my afternoon. Keep this quiet, we don't need the public to panic over this."

 _Hangar bay of the VSD Liberator_

 _"_ Alright, listen up," Acting-Captain Tymon paced from one end of the formation to the other. 12 Stormtroopers, outfitted in Zero-G armor, stood at perfect attention, their head's tracking his every movement. "Captain Arksend wants us to move from observation to offense, those sentients you've probably heard about are hostile. We're talking 'shoot you in your damn face without saying hi' aggressive, so rather than start a full on ground war, we're going for shock and awe, and you guys will be the tip of the spear."

The Stormtroopers smacked a fist against their breastplate and let out a howl of affirmation, a hallmark of their division.

"So, here's what you're gonna do. That TIE/br is going to carry you to your destination, the only manned orbital platform these sentient's got. Looks like it's geared to research, so I doubt they'll have anything more than small slugthrowers on board. Once you take that hunka junk, you're going to use whatever tracking equipment it has to locate any communications satellites, then disable or blow them the hell out of the sky. Easy pickings, but we're going for show of force. We freak them out, they bow down, we're home in less than a year. We clear?"

Another clash of gloved fists against plastoid and a howl of affirmation.

"Good. Get going, and good luck. You're gonna need it."

 _TIE/br, VSD Liberator Hangar Bay_

 _She dreamed he was a pebble falling towards an endless sea, the expanse of turqouise and white both calming and terrifying in it's enormity. As she tumbled, she got a glimpse of a dark aflame, slowly descending to the sea's surface, except the sea was no longer a sea, but a mass of millions of faces, eyes shut, sleeping. She plunged past those faces, somehow causing a tiny ripple, and yet, when the ripple passed those few faces they opened their eyes..._

Eanika Stesta opened her eyes to a nudge on her shoulder. Her co-pilot jerked his head to the Stormtroopers boarding their troop compartment, then clicked his comm off and leaned forward.

"You doing okay? Looked like you were having a little bit of a nightmare there." His voice carried concern, both for her and himself, she was the pilot, after all.

Eanika nodded, clicking off her own comms. "Just pre-flight jitters, you know how it is. First time we'll be going against a complete unknown and all."

With a nod from her co-pilot, they clicked their comms back online, listing their various pre-flight checks as well as confirming the roster of the troopers in the passenger compartment. After a brief delay, they received confirmation for departure and the TIE dropped from it's clamps and screamed into an unfamiliar space.

The TIE/br filled an odd niche in the Imperial Navy, built from a TIE Bomber with it's torpedo bay overhauled for a troop compartment and fitted with an adaptable airlock it was truly a bizarre addition. While the Gamma-class troop transport both doubled on it's capacity _and_ had heavier firepower and the Sentinel landing craft could carry a full platoon or more, the TIE/br found it's niche is lighting quick boarding against unknown targets. A role it was about to fill perfectly.

 _International Space Station, March 10th 2015_

June Rodriguez was having a plesant dream of summer browned grass over looking an endless sea when she was rudely awaken by a gentle shaking.

"Hey, June. You need to see this." Her fellow crewmate launched off the pad she called a bed and floated down a corridor, becknoing her to follow.

With a sigh, she tmanaged to tease her hair into a tight bun and unstrapped herself from the "wall", drifting after him. The nodule was abuzz with activity, crew swarming over every instrument and a sense of excitement lingered above the taste of recycled air. Somewhere in the distance, someone repeatedly tried to contact NASA.

Her mission commander beckoned her over to a monitor, pushing a member from another nodule out of the way to make room for her, then pointed at the screen.

Something was on it's way here.

A thrill of excitement, of discovery, rushed through June's chest. _First contact, and I'll be here to see it! NASA can suck it, told them it wasn't freak chance!_ Reality took it's chance right there to crush her dreams. _How will they know our docking procedure?_ Panic replaced excitement. She kicked off and away from the monitor and clambored across as many instruments as possible towards the airlock.

 _TIE/br Troop Compartment_

"Wait, wait, hold up." The crew chief was relentlessly tapping at the docking port's terminal. "Are you kidding me? This is what I got to work with?"

Sergeant Crutive nodded a helmet in his direction. "What's the problem?"

"Nothing you," for a split second, Sgt. Crutive thought he heard "plastic boys" muttered under the crew chief's breath, "Should worry about, just, damn, this is the first docking clamp I've ever had to actually _work at_."

That statement didn't exactly fill Crutive with confidence. He felt the thrum of the engines slow and finally shudder to a halt, the groaning of the docking hatch ) configuring itself (And the crew chief congratulating himself) announced their arrival. Sergeant Crutive bounced himself out of his seat.

"Alright, Zero Gee, stay oriented, don't shoot anything you don't have too. Ready?" His squad howled an affirmative, and he howled back. As he howled in respone, his stomach dropped as the gravity in the crew compartment disengaged.

"First one up is you, Sergeant!" The crew chief announced. "Ready..." The hatch bored through the outer airlock door then locked tight and hissed open. "GO. NEXT MAN, FOLLOW BEHIND HIM."

Crutive shot through the hatch with a jet from his manuvering pack, leaving behind cold black metal for sterile white padding. He cut the thrust in the opposite direction and landed feet first against a wall next to the internal airlock, E-11 trained on the door. The rest of his squad jetted in after him, and with a thumbs up to the crew chief the TIE/br sealed it's crewcompartment.

"Breach?" One his squadmates asked. With a nod from Crutive, he quickly ran a handheld scanner across the internal and attached small charges to the weak points. "Breaching!" With a hiss and shower of sparks the charges worked their magic and the inner door recoiled slightly outward.

Sergeant Curtive was the first through the door, E-11 up and at the ready, expecting to be met with a fusilade of slugs and curses...only to find a single distressed looking olive skinned woman in a jumpsuit on the other side.


	5. Chapter 5

AN: So! Starting next week I'll settle into a M/W/F update schedule, that way I'll have enough time to pop out regular updates with enough content to hold everyone over!

 _March 12th, 2015, LBJ Space Center_

"Uhhhh, boss? We might have a problem?"

"The Colbert malfunctioning again? I told them a treadmill in space wasn't a good idea."

"Well...no. Just that the ISS has delivered a flawless report for the last day and a half. They _never_ give us flawless reports. And considering they reported a hull breach about that time ago..."

Multiple scenarios ran through the division chief's head, some kind of disaster, equipment malfunction, _something_ , and the ISS crew was doing the noble thing by reporting an all clear while giving off the subtle cues of distress, anything they could to say _"we're in trouble, don't come for us"_.

"Keep an eye on it, if any reports come back regarding an some kinda efficency increase I want you to call in everyone we can get, no questions. Just tell them the ISS is running at one hundred percent, okay?"

"Sure thing boss, I'll keep you up to date."

 _It's gonna be a long day._

 _36 hours earlier, International Space Station_

June's heart did it's best to leap out of her throat. First the internal airlock's seals exploded in a shower of sparks and a shriek of tortured metal then a whole group of _something_ burst through the doorway, light's reflecting off gleaming white hardsuits of some kind. One of the things tracked her with a ribbed tube looking thing as it entered, something that made the depths of her mind scream _gun!_ before the rational part of her brain took over, causing her to jerk her hands up in a display of surrender.

"We're unarmed!" She declared, an edge of panic of panic on her voice. Nearly a dozen more figures in those gleaming white hardsuits drifted after the first, each training their weapons on her before moving to every access point and peering into it. "We're scientists!"

The distant thumping and clanging of her crewmen in the distance brought a new sense of panic to June.

"Wait, wait!" She called after the hard suited things floating past her. She frantically mimed a series of gestures with her hands, holding out five fingers, point to herself, to the weapons the unknown boarders held, then shaking her head and making every "no" gesture she could think of.

"We're unarmed, no one here has any weapons." She continued. And yet, she doubted whomever had boarded them understood a single word, let alone her gestures. For all June knew, she was about to witness the slaughter of her crewmates. The lead thing in a hardsuit slightly bobbed it's head and a chorus of clicks surrounded her, and for the first time in forever, June began to silently pray.

 _ISS, Earth Orbit_

Sergeant Crutive hadn't expected the sentients of this planet to look so...human. And even more surprising, no hail of slugs greeted him in the moments after he entered the station. The lone humanoid raised it's _No, her. Mamalarian breasts_. Hands in a motion of surrender, babbling a stream of words both incomprehensible and also slightly familiar. The rest of his squad dri

fted after him, taking up security positions near every corridor that lead to the airlock.

The sapient stopped her talking then made a series of gestures that were universally clear, _Five crew, unarmed_ , _don't shoot._ Crutive relayed the information to his men.

"Looks like we've got five crew to deal with, unarmed. Switch to stun," The clicks of fire selectors being swapped to stun briefly drowned out his comms. "No needless bloodshed, let's get this thing secure and ready to go. Record everything you hear from them, Intel will want something to work on for a UT patch."

Muffled thumps from the corridors leading off to the rest of the station caught his attention. "Eyes up, here they come. Ten and two, cover your sector and check your fire. Last thing we need is a hull breach."

 _Occupied ISS, March 11th, 2015_

June watched in muted horror as her crew members drifted into the airlock, those that didn't resist were quietly pushed into her corner, and the two that did...a wave of radiant blue _something_ stopped them, and they too were added to her corner. Minutes later they woke, groaning and complaining of intense headaches. From her headcount, the entire crew had come to check the commotion, more than likely to ensure no fire or hull breach had occurred, all of them clad in pressure suits. Whatever was in those hardsuits spread out through the station, likely covering all their bases unless her wild gestures had somehow lied to them.

An hour passed.

Then two.

Then three.

Finally, the first one of those _things_ drifted towards her, she noticed that he had a single bright orane epaultet on his bulky armor.

"Understand me you, yes?" It's voice was definetely masculine, and projected through some kind of intercom. The hisses and crackles in it's voice followed by the click at the end of it's sentence confirmed it. "Communications we are for. Harm not intended. Comply, you?"

From the slight delay between the thing's slight movements and voice, June deduced that it was using some kind of translator. _Just as bad as Google translate._ Raced through her mind before she managed to compose herself. "What do you want?"

"Communication. Stranded. War is of badly damaging to ours. We seek study. Wait," It reached up to it's hardsuit helmet, releasing it with a hiss of gasses and some other atmopshere. A handsome, scarred, and _totally human_ face was underneath. It spoke in a language unfamiliar to her, and a half second later she heard it translated, filled with the static of an intercom. "Communications we need. Planet probed, hostile peoples. Yes, secret kept?"

With a nod, June signed either a brave new world or a death sentence.

 _Occupied sentient orbital platform_

Sergeant Crisyos Crutive let out a sigh of relief. Not only had removing his helmet _not_ poisoned him with some exotic gas or disease, it had seemed to put whatever near-humans that crewed this station at ease. Diplomacy had never been his strong suite, and here he was, telling a convincing enough half-truth to ensure the cooperation of the stations crew. With a silent thanks to his intel team for designing a Universal Translator patch so quickly, he clicked it off and dealt orders out to his squad.

"Dorsam, take your team, find and secure whatever comms they have, I want a solid control on what goes in and out. Kel same to you, sweep the station. Make sure we don't have any surprises waiting for us, especially in whatever this thing uses for a powerplant." With a chatter of affirmation, the squad moved by kicking off various surfaces or a hiss of gas from their thruster packs, following their team leads.

Once the last member of his squad departed he turned back to the assembled humanoids. "We're simply sweeping the station for any kind of booby traps" _We searching for of traps of the explosive nature on here platform_ His UT repeated, this time with the uncanny valley of talking over a voice not silenced by his helmet."Once we're clear, we'll allow you to return to your stations under certain conditions." _None explosive found, returned to work as for secrets kept._ "Keep our presence here under wraps, and you're free to do what you had been doing before we..uh..." He looked at the gaping hole his squad had come from. "Broke your airlock." _Secret kept for crew free, breach airlock withstanding_

Crutive clicked his UT off again, calling back to Acting-Captain Tymon and by extend, Captain Tymon. "Station secured, no casualities. Looks like a civilain research platform. Fenrir Squadron requesting new orders, sir."


	6. Chapter 6

AN: Sorry for the delay! Early Tuesday morning is stll Monday, right?

 _Officer's Briefing Room, ISD Indomitable_

The rumor mill was once again in full swing. With that many officers and their senior enlisted crammed into a single room it was only a matter of time before a pet theory snowballed into a full on shouting match, Arksend's usual five minute tardiness did nothing to help the matters. And with the conflicting rumors came the existing rivalries, so deep did they run that the Scout Trooper CO was squaring up against the Stormtrooper's CO over a case of "Who could have taken the station faster", only the hiss of the door and Arksend clearing his throat made them back down.

"Gentlemen, you can have a go at each other some time. For now, it's what you've all been waiting for. Deployment orders." He carefully gauged the reaction of the officers, those involved in logistics generally had a look of mild concern, yet the combat arms officers had slow creeping smiles – and dagger-like glares shot at their rivals.

"With the oribtal platform under our control we've managed to form a rough map of Sol-3's surface. Infrastructure, power plants, military bases. We have enough information to launch the next phase of our operation, general disruption of established infrastructure." Arksend tapped out a series of commands at his terminal and a series of holo images sprang to life above the briefing table. A small rendition of Sol-3 with multiple glowing dots marked floated next to multiple maps detailing power plants and tech centers.

"To begin the operation, each ship will deploy as many Ion capable craft to disable marked communications satellites." With another series of commands he sent the orbit charts to each of the flight officers. "Once they are disabled or destroyed we will begin ground opperations. Scout troopers," The Scout's CO shot a grin at the Stormtrooper's CO, making him wince and visibly sulk. "Will perform raids on power centers with the intent of crippling them and further destabilizing local infrastructure. Unfortunately, we don't have the man power to hit _every_ center, so the raids will be focused on high profile targets."

The maps and globe winked out, replaced by a still of a series of massive cooling towers, and multiple dams "Scans indicate these are crude nuclear reactors, whether they are fission or fusion is unknown. Additionaly, several high output dams have been identified. Once these facilities are offline the various Army battalions on board will go on alert for ground-side deployment, with the Stormtrooper Corps standing by as a high priority Quick Reaction Force. From there, we move onto crippling any chance of a local military response and finally, we make our presence known. With luck, a majority of the sentients will capitulate and we leave the system within the year. Dismissed, good luck to you and your men."

 _Occupied ISS, March 13th 2015_

June was growingly increasingly confused with the strangers motives. First they had boarded the ISS in a shower of sparks and raised weapons, _then_ they brought in another set of people in jumpsuit who had shout near endless annoyed streams of whatever language they spoke at the white armored ones, and _then_ had hooked up some tablet looking things all across the station and left, before _finally_ the guy in that gleaming armor _Chris-yo or something like that_ started to play diplomat. The whole thing made her head spin.

 _Usually it goes in reverse. They show up, do their "Space-place needs water and/or women!", then drops the tech, then brings the guns._ She rolled her eyes as she filed yet another impeccable report from her station, hoping that someone down their would get the subtle _Hey how are you? Oh everything is peachy, except we've got uninvited guests. Lots of them._ And judging by how every communication (Thuroughly watched by those eerie vaguely skull-like helmets) had come back as usual, nothing, not a single hint, not a turn of the phrase that might have indicated they understood. It was enough to make her want to beat her head against a table, or...any flat surface that wasn't padded or used for storage.

And there he was again, Cris _forget the rest of his name,_ held fast to one of the walls/floors/ceilings behing her. So far, he'd been the only one to take off his helmet, for all she knew the other ones in armor were nothing but some kind of robot. And yet, something caught her eye as she hit send, a faint flash of blue out a nearby view port. She drifted over without hitting send, curious as to what it was.

Somewhere in the dark streaks of blue impacted in orbit, too high in the atmosphere to hit anything on the surface. _Satellites. They're hitting satellites._ June looked back at her sort-of captor, a mix of horror and betrayl on her face. "You said...you said you were here for help. You needed to repair."

Cris-whatever looked sympathetic, but unrelenting. "As spoke, hostile peoples. Help necessary." The uncanny valley of the delay between when he spoke and when whatever was translated had long worn off, instead Jen thrust a finger at the view port.

" _That._ What is that?"

He gazed out the viewport for several minutes, lost in thought. Then he reached down to his belt , clicked something off, and spoke in accentless English. "It means I move towards being homebound." Without another word he put his helmet back on and kicked off a wall, floating down towards the center of the station.

June couldn't believe it, aliens on _her_ station, shooting down satellites, and now speaking archaic-ly refined yet understandable English? Her stomach churned as her mind raced thinking of what would happen next.

 _Early morning, X-Com Headquarters, Mojave Desert, March 13th 2015_

Alarm klaxons blared throughout the base, a different tone from the usual alarm. Where they had drilled for countless hours with the training and "alert" klaxons, this one was totally new to them, rousing even the hardiest of sleepers from their bunks. It was to this din the Commander awoke. They made their way to the hologlobe, passing dozens of staff struggling into uniform jackets as they stumbled half asleep towards their stations, awkwardly saluting the Commander as they passed.

The hologlobe was awash with red highlights, Central Officer Bradford shouted orders to the closest cluster of staff that approached him, a moot point as the command center bustled like a kicked ant hill, various clusters scrambling from one side to the other.

"Commander, thank god you're here." Bradford shoved a tablet into their chest, an exhausted look hung around his eyes. "We've got multiple reports from around the globe, x-ray incursions at multiple locations. I've earmarked high priorty locations."

The Commander took a glance at the tablet, multiple nuclear power plants were marked, and only a single hydro electric dam – one that provided power to an entire region. With a swipe of their finger, the Commander handed it back to Bradford.

"Hoover dam? Of course, Commander, I'll get Strike One deployed ASAP, tentative estimate, one hour."

 _High priority Hydro-electric plant, Sol-3_

Corporal Eligle was amazed at how easy it had been to take the dam. He and his platoon had swept down from their landing site expecting a wall of weapons fire and instead...had found a mostly empty facility. As they swept down, they found various _unarmed_ civilains, and a skeleton crew at that.

 _These sentients have night shifts too, looks like_. Was the only thought racing through his mind as they swept the lower levels, turning up yet more unarmed civilains. The dam itself was massive, the amount of brass plaques and water rushing through only testified to it's scale The mission had, so far, been extraordinarily simple, get in, sabatoge the turbines, then get out.

And then the call came in.

"Corporal, we got company topside!"

 _Early morning, Hoover Dam, March 13th 2015_

 _Central this is Big Sky, Strike One is in the AO and awaiting deployment_

Sergeant Ross stepped off the ramp of the Skyranger and into the chilld dessert air. By all appearences, the dam was perfectly normal. The distant headlights of a car making it's way to the dam and the gentle chirp of insects only cemeted the feeling. And yet as her team made it's way to the employee entrance not a soul greeted, no one popped up with a _"What the fuck?"_ or _"Thank god you're here!"_

The entrance had a single security office with a shattered window. Several burn marks ringed where the glass had been, and a partly opened door gave a hint to the fate of it's occupants. With a closed fist, Hannah Ross signaled her squad to stay put as she pushed forward towards the booth, giving the door a gentle nudge followed by a sharp shove when it resisted.

With a careful step and a sweep of her rifle she stepped through the doorway, two bodies and a completely fried phone greeted her. Despite the general carnage, Hannah felt a pulse on each of the security guards, slow, yet strong and steady enough to suggest they were in a deep sleep.

"Strike One-Five to Central, two friendlies, both out cold. Looks like some kinda shock weapon, over." With a murmur of acknowledgement she moved back into the lobby, motioning for her squad to follow her.

They eventually reached a junction, one heading for offices, the other to the turbines and maintences bays. She jerked her heads towards the office section and two of her squad peeled off, she gave both of them a quick slap on the back before taking the four remaining members of her squad into the turbine room

She never expected it to be _this_ big. The turbine room, no, _cavern_ , stretched on for what seemed like infinity. And even in that infinity, she picked out movement. X-rays in dull white armor, planting something on every turbine they passed. Hannah motioned for her squad members to spread out, then dropped to prone on the catwalk and deployed her bipod. She managed to get a solid view of one of the X-Rays through her M145 sight.

"On my shot, light 'em up." She whispered through her headset, then settled her sight on the X-ray's chest and squeezed the trigger.

 _Turbine room, Hydro-Electric plant_

Corporal Eligle was about to write the whole operation off as a blue milk run when the slug thrower opened up. One of his men flinched as the rounds impacted on his armor, then screamed as a spray of red burst from the compromised light plastoid. On instinct he dropped and snapped his E-11 into position, scanning the upper catwalks for signs of the aggresors.

A half dozen blasters barked in the direction he was looking, some of them the high pitch whine and bright blue of stun bolts before settling back to the harsh red of standard blaster bolts. And there it was, with each impact he saw one or two shapes flinch or roll.

"Alright, snipers! Link up to my targeting! I'm your spotter now, take a shot at whatever doesn't look like!" With that he went back to scanning the upper catwalks, pausing on a single shape that was most definetely not "Steel and concrete". The lower pitched whine of an E-11S made it through the aural dampners in his helmet and the shape jerked backward, then lay still. "Good kill, good kill, stand by for more targets."

The Scout Snipers went to work with deadly effiency, first one, then two fell to them. Whom ever the local defenders were seemed to lose heart in the fight, one broke and ran for the doorway on the upper catwalk, and despite being tagged on the way by a stray blaster bolt, managed to make it out. The other three held fast, he could hear the chatter of their weapons and the angry buzz of slugs narrowly missing his own position.

"Hey down there!" He called to his men setting charges, faintly hoping they had finished. "Could use a hand with this?"

A brief affirmative clicked across his comm, spurring him to action. "Alright, get up, everyone get up! Make a break for our bikes, head back to the rendezvous. Sentinel Landing Craft is dust off in fifteen from first contact, make sure you're there!"

Who ever they were fighting had stopped constant fire and now was shooting sporadically, as Eligle stood a round smacked into his armor, sending him stumbling into the alcove/exit behind. He looked down at his brush with mortality and found a solid slug wedged in the hard upper portion of his armor, light plastoid thuroughly cracked by it's impact. He raised his E-11 and dropped to a knee, maintaining security as the rest of his squad moved past him. _Four...five and six, six needs medical assitance, all clear_.

With his entire squad out, Eligle reatreated to the speeder bikes they had rode in. With a grim expression, he set one to overload – while a speeder gave the Scouts their mobility it was in no way worth a life – and most definetely not worth leaving in enemy hands. With a final look back at the damn, Eligle toggled the throttle and sped away, into the deep desert.

 _Turbine Room, Hoover Damn_

Hannah couldn't believe it. Her team, _her own handpicked team_ , made up of some of the best opperators in the world, had folded against the X-Rays. Three dead, one out of his mind in panic, and the other shaking in the post-combat adrenaline crash. It was a shit day.

And then the world erupted.

To her it seemed like the whole dam had drowned in fire, and yet when she came too she only mildly blackened by soot, on a catwalk overlooking the twisted remains of a row of generators. She swallowed, hard. The Commander wasn't known for being forgiving, afterall, they had sacked soldiers for showing low scores in a training sim _designed_ to fail them. Still, procedure was procedure...

"Central, this is Strike One. Ah..three KIA, mission failed. Returning to base."

She quickly shut off her radio and sent a silent prayer to whomever was listeneing.


	7. Chapter 7

AN: Sorry for being so late, helping a friend move! Probably gonna be the last update for this week, unless my muse hits me with a truck over the weekend.

 _Debriefing Room, X-com HQ, March 13th 2015_

Much to Hannah's surprise, it was _Bradford_ chewing her out. The Commander stood silent in the background.

"So let me get this straight, Sergeant. Not only did you lose _three_ of our own out there, but now the _entire American Southwest_ is experiencing rolling blackouts, and all we have to show for it is some twisted heap of metal and a badly damaged weapon. Did you even manage to hit anything you shot at? What the hell happened down there?"

She winced at that remark, but brushed aside her discomfort to answer. "Sir, Strike-One infiltrated the dam with no difficulties, on-site security was incapcitated through unknown means. We engaged hostile X-Rays in the main Turbine room, I managed to hit one with a solid burst. They bleed red, sir. From there, the X-rays returned fire with unknown weaponry that burned through our armor like wax, then retreated to an unknown location. Less than a minute later, they blew the turbines and strike-one withdrew shortly after. Three KIA, one psych cat."

Hannah could see the sheer rage at her incompetence twisting Bradford's face into a particularly nasty scowl, he was a split second from unleashing an endless torrent of curses before the Commander stepped forward and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Go easy on her, Bradford. Unknown X-ray, no intel, it's a miracle there were any survivors. Take a walk and cool off."

With a forced sigh, Bradford stormed out of the room, leaving Hannah alone with the Commander.

"Sergeant, I'm not going to lie. Survivors or no, that operation was an absolute disaster, both for us and our standing with the Council. However, the fact that you came back at all is a minor vicory for us, you've seen, first hand, what their weaponry is capable of. Not only that, you've seen that as deadly as they, they're far from invulnerable an-"

The Commander paused and cocked their head slightly, listening to the ear bud wrapped around their right ear.

"We can finish this heart-to-heart later Sergeant, I need you to grab who ever you can from the barracks and have them on standby, we've got contacts. Lots of them."

 _Hangar Bay, ISD Indomitable_

Captain Arksend gazed down upon the assembled pilots, an elevated maintainence platform serving as a make-shift pulpit. While their skirmishes with the Warlords that had led them to this back water had whittled their numbers down, the surviving pilots (just under half the original compliment) were now seasoned veterans.

"Gentlemen, and lady," Arksend gestured to their sole female pilot, a low chuckle rolled through the crowd at Eanika's expense. "By now, you've all heard some rumor or another about our successes planetside, and today, I'm here to confirm them. Thanks to the efforts of both yourselves and the Scout division we have crippled these sentients. With no power and no communications they fumble in the dark, by the time we openly reveal ourselves it will be too late, they will have no choice but to surrender, completely, without conditions. Some of you may be wondering from then, where do we go?"

With a smile only visible to himself, he knocked the estimated depature down by half.

"Six months. I have been assured that with the resources available and industrial centers converted, it will take six months to refit our flotilla. In sixth months, we go home! And the next step, the _final step_ to those six months rests upon you. As I speak, the Captains of the Liberator and the Vanguard are preparing their own flight crews, and with our combined might we will cripple any opposition to our goal. We. Will. Return. Home."

A cheer roared through the hangar, Arksend let it wash over him until his comm chirpped a confirmation from the other ships, barely audible over the din. With a raised hand, he silenced the crowd.

"Pilots, report to your ships and await orders from your flight leads. Good luck."

 _TIE/hb Heavy Bomber, ISD Indomitable_

It felt good to be home. As one of the only TIE/sa pilots qualified to fly a TIE/br, she had been loaned to the Liberator and missed every second away from her baby. From the quirky engine that liked to dump more power than needed into the engines, or the doubled up munitions compartment, right down to the crude hash marks on the targeting console that marked every kill, Eanika felt truly at ease here. Behind her seat, her co-pilot/bombardier blasted some noise he swore was music as he went over the munitions, ensuring each proton bomb's impact sensors and fuses were in working order.

"Can you believe this, Stesta? _Advanced_ Proton Bombs. We're gonna knock the sithspit outta these guys." Eanika's co-pilot was young, and it showed. Hell, she was dead certain he lied about his age to enlist. "Half a klick blast radius? Damn me if we aren't gonna just drop one and be outta there. What's our run look like?"

Eanika flipped through the various overlays on her HUD, finally landing on the mission map her flight lead had uploaded to the rest of the flight. "Looks like...an airfield, military, southwest of a continent. Estimated flight time, uh...less than an hour. Looks like we _are_ just dropping one. Interceptor and plain vanilla TIE escort on the way there, looks like the Interceptor's do their thing while our TIE escort sticks close. You got all of it?"

Her co-pilot flashed her a grin and slapped his helmet into place with a hiss of gas. "Hell if I care, you're flying, just tell me where to drop my load."

She smiled and secured her own helmet and started the engine warmup, reminded of her early days as a Bombardier aboard a TIE/sa. A scroll of text across HUD announced five minutes until launch. "Hey," she announced with a slap across the back of her co-pilots helmet. "Five 'till we go. Drop when we hit the waypoints, don't worry about the rest."

 _Control Tower, MCAS Mirarmar, March 13th 2015_

For some godforsaken reason they'd been flying patrols round of the clock. The accident at the Hoover dam had only intesified the patrols to a 50/50 12 hour patrol, plus or minus refueling time. So far, nothing, and then...

And then the RADAR lit up like a christmas tree. Contacts, _dozens_ _of them_ , popped up on the scope, and they close. _Right on top of them_ close. And that's when they heard it, a horrific shrieking as dozens of black shapes spread across the airfield, and the last thing any of the staff in the control tower saw was a lance of brilliant green...

 _TIE/hb, above MCAS Mirarmar_

Eanika jerked the stick up and leveled out, moving the craft in-line with the waypoint along with the rest of her flight, making their way to a block of buildings at the far end of the airfield. An ocean of radio chatter washed over her

 _-Silon lead, check fire, that is civilain aircraft, say again, che-_

 _Mu squadron lining up for a run, requesting Interceptor cover_

 _Tau lead here, in range of target. Tally no bandits in persuit, how copy?_

 _Tau lead, cleared for bomb-_

Eanika was shaken out of the semi-trance as her nav-computer screamed an alert at her, less than a couple kilometers to the target.

"Alright back there, drop just short of the target, we'll get better splash coverage of it that way."

She could feel her seat rock slightly with her co-pilots overly enthusiastic nods. "Gotcha, gotcha, keep me steady and we'll do them dirty. Opening bomb bay doors," a distant whirring of machinery echoed through the cockpit. "Bay doors open, Tau-2 ready for bombing run."

It was at that moment her nav-computer let out a warning tone, a dull double shriek.

"Tau-2, got a lock on me, dumping flares."

The hiss of flares, and the nav-computer still let out it's dull warning. A whisper echoed in the back of Eanika's mind and she jerked the flight stick hard to the upper left. The missile detonated where she had been a split second before, instead of the sharp pain of shrapnel tearing through her she felt a sudden kick – and then the engine began to lose power.

Panic rose in Eanika's throat, she tried her hardest to force it back down and remain in control. "Tau-lead, this is Tau-2, I'm hit and losing power, going to dump ordance and try and crash-land. I say again, Tau-2 is hit and-"

The harsh crackle of electronics frying cut Eanika off, her HUD scrolled an aggresively red readout of disabled systems. Among them, communications. With a curse, she turned back to her pilot, slugging him in the shoulder. "Did you hear that? Dump our ordnance, right now!"

Her co-pilot slumped to the side from her punch, dead or unconcious, she didn't know. Panic rose in her throat again. _If we crash with all these bombs still on board..._

Eanika struggled out of her flight webbing, stretching over her incapcitated co-pilot and thumbing the bomb-bay's release. A dull energized whoosh and the bomber gaining a slight speed boost said she'd been successful in her efforts, and when she turned back...

A stretch of scrubland rapidly accelerating towards her. She jerked the stick back, too little, too late. The bomber crashed, hard, into the ground, skipping up and back into the dirt several times before grinding to a halt, who knows how far from anywhere.

 _At least I won't be captured_ Was the last thought through Eanika's head before she slipped into the merciful embrace of unconciousness.


	8. Chapter 8

AN: Tuesday morning is totaaaally monday, right?

Eanika woke to a brilliant, cloudless blue sky peering through a jagged gash in the hull. A trickle of warm dry air tickled her nose, and she lurched in a panic, the crash webbing the only thing keeping her from launching chest first into her flight stick. Her hands flew, slightly panicked, across her helmet, searching for the breach and... _there._ A significant crack where she thought she had smacked into some console or another on one of the many impacts, just wide enough to let in the local atmosphere. With a twinge of further panic, Eanika unbuckled herself and lifted the life support unit on her chest to where she could see it. A steady green diode met her eye, in stark contrast to the "No-atmosphere" white it usually displayed. And then, once the matter of basic survival was taken care of, the sheer gravity of the situation set in. Shot down over hostile territory, with an offensive currently on-going, search and rescue wouldn't be the first priority of anyone she knew in command.

Eanika had to find a place to hide. To stay _safe_ , until such merits were warranted. She looked up to where her boarding hatch would have been and instead found a gaping maw of twisted metal and that same bright blue sky shining through.

 _Obviously ripped off in the crash_. Was her sole idle thought. Eanika's escape and evasion training kicked in and she reached under her seat, groping until she felt the feel of a cast-plast wrapped package. With a grunt of effort, she tore it from it's addhesive and plopped it in her lap. It was nothing special, a bright orange package with "EMERGENCY SURVIVAL" stenciled across it's surface. Eanika knew exactly what it meant – a single SE-14r Blaster, multiple ration packs, survival gear, and most importantly, a hybrid Comm/HoloComm unit..

It was when she looked back to check on her co-pilot that Eanika realized her problems had just begun. Not only had she _crashed_ but the crew section of the bomber had _cracked in half_ , a tendril of black smoke drifted into that perfect sky, who knows how many kilometers away. Kilometers of who knows what ground, who knows what amount of hostile sentients, with a co-pilot who may or may not be dead. And the worst part?

Eanika knew he was alive, she could feel it. And despite all her training, every ounce of protocol at her that self-preservation over her own crew was paramount, she scrambled out of the ruined metal of her bomber and across the scrublands, towards the smoke.

 _Later, UFO Crash site, March 13th, 2015_

Hannah Ross was not happy.

To her south-west she could hear the sounds of battle, distant as they were. The deep thumps of something detonating kilometers off, the distant rattle of gunfire and the higher pitched whine of something else. And here she was, tromping through scrubland towards some hunk of metal far from the fighting. Her heart went out to the Americans fighting tooth and nail, even as most of her cursing was directed at X-Com command. Even that stopped once they crested one of the many hills halmark of the Southwest and got their first look at the crash site.

Some kind of tube-shaped craft jutted out the sandy soil, angular protusions that Hannah could only guess were wings bent over it and thuroughly chewed to pieces. Thick black smoke rose from the wreckage and curled into the sky.

 _Shen would have a field day with whatever's left of this thing._ Was the thought that crossed Hannah's mind.

She motioned for her squad to flop into the prone, half out of concern that the thing would explode, half because Big Sky had seen fit to drop them far from the crash site. With all the gear they were wearing, trucking multiple kilos across rolling hills of scrubland was definetely not comfortable.

"Central, this is Strike One. Eyes on the crash site, zero activity. Looks like those Marine boys managed to splash an X-ray all on their own. Standing by on the perimeter, UFO is heavily damaged and something is burning inside. Request del-"

Hannah stopped her report as a black clad figure stumbled from the wreckage, clutching something angled and tubed-shaped enough to match her description of a weapon. It paused to look back at the smoking hunks of metal, then turned towards the empty scrubland and called out something in a language completely unfamiliar to her.

"Disregard last transmission, we have a survivor, say again, we have a survivor." She watched anxiously as it stumbled away from the wreackage and into the scrubland, towards and even more distant trail of smoke. "Survivor is on the move, I say again, we have a survivor. Requesting further action, over"

The radio was dead silent for an uncomfortable ten seconds. When the silence was broken, it was the Commander, not Bradford, on the other end.

"Take them, alive. No matter the cost. Out."

Emotions welled up in Hannah, not only had her own handpicked team been _slaughtered_ by these things, but the Commander had the nerve to Out her _on her own request._ But as much as she wanted to open up on that lone figure, to utterly butcher it and leave nothing but a patch of chunky salsa to be found by it's compatriots, her duty and oath to X-Com hammered it back down into the deep darkness of her soul.

With a motion, she summoned her team from their established positions. "Alright, listen up and listen close. New plan, that _thing_ there," Hannah jerked her thumb to the black figure wandering into the wilderness. "Central wants it. _Alive._ So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna come in from behind, take it live, bring it back to that fucker that dropped us so far off, go home."

Some of her new team mates grumbled at the "alive" bit, most of them had been quietly drawn from the USMC, the very force under attack so close and yet so far from them.

"I know, I know, believe me. Canadian as I am, it sucks we have to leave them like that. But Central wants it, and a live X-ray gives us more intel than a dead X-ray. And the more intel we have, the better chance we have on fighting them out there, we clear?"

The grumbling had died down, the look of disdain in her rookie's eyes replaced by determination.

"Good boys, now let's catch us an X-ray."

 _Earlier, Unknown desert, Sol-3_

The scrubland seemed to taunt Eanika as she drew closer to the smoke, so close, yet so far away. Already she had passed multiple single buildings, taking care to skirt any perceived sightlines, _and the roads she had crossed._ They alternated between completely empty stretches of pavement and jam packed with vehicles, forcing her to search for a wash or other bridged section to pass under. More than once she'd had to crawl through a rudimentary drainage system and through the local insect and rodent life, something a hot welt on the back of her neck reminded her she wouldn't soon forget.

And finally, after reaching the lip of a hill, there she was. The curl of smoke gave way to a thick band, the twisted wreckage of the rest of her bomber, _her home_ , and her co-pilot.

As well as a half-dozen other, unfamiliar shapes behind him.

Eanika immediately dropped and brought her blaster to bear on them and, despite the odds, felt the her finger tightening on the trigger. And there it was again, the tickle of a suggestion in the back of her head telling her to duck, to crawl back a bit. She listened, shuffling down from the lip of the hill. Her intuition had never failed her before, why would it now?

And yet, it tore at her heart. She heard her co-pilot calling her surname, his voice raw with panic and concern. Heard the harsh bark of alien voices and the discharge of a blaster. Heard the crack of something heavy against plastoid alloy. And she waited.

Finally, the whsiper of intuition told her it was safe and Eanika crawled to the lip of the hill, gazing towards the distance. A black figure marched solmenly towards the horizon, flanked by a half-dozen unfamiliar figures. She felt many things well up inside her breast, fear, self-hate, and pure, undiluted rage, before her duty took over and she keyed the survival comm, hoping someone would be listening.

"This is DB-213. I have been shot down and DB-427 has been captured. Requesting immediate extraction."

 _Later, X-Ray Crash Site_

Hannah watched, almost pitiously as the black clothed thing called something out. It hadn't gotten very far from the crash site, maybe only half a kilometer, and it had already stop to call every dozen or so steps. And now?

Now her team was ready to take it. They sprang from the sandy soiled and stormed at it, weapons at the ready, shouting warnings. It snapped off a panic shot and brilliantly red bolt hummed by Hannah's head, only for the rifle butt of one of her team mates to send it sprawling in the dust. Rifle's leveled at the black thing, Hannah approached it and made the simplest gestures she could think of. An index finger leveled at it, a thumb thrust to her, and another point off into the distance.

It stared blankly back at her with beady, bulbous black eyes before one of her team members tugged it to it's feet and gave it a shove in the back, pointing over it's shoulder into the distance. Finally, it nodded, and started to trudge in the direction of the Skyranger. And yet...

A dim whisper Hannah had never heard nor felt before snapped her heard towards a nearby hillcrest. For a split second, she thought she saw a shape scrambling out of sight, and then, the whisper subsided. With a shrug, she chalked it up to nerves and began the long, slow slog of bringing an unknown prisoner to BigSky.

AN: The big ol' battle going on comes next chapter! As for Hannah, little tidbit, she was the first rookie I got in Long War that had both solid Will and Aim scores, so of course she gets immortalized here!


	9. Chapter 8-5

_AN: Just two updates this week. The ol' muse isn't delivering much! So this is just a stopgap chapter 'till friday night_

 _MCAS Mirarmar, March 13th 2015_

Corporal Ramirez woke to the suffocating crush of metal, concrete, and god knows what else pressing on his chest. Dim, nearly blood red light filtered through the rubble, accompanied by the acrid smell of fuel fires, blood, and charred flesh. He panicked and tried to dig his way towards the light and mercifully, the rubble piled shifted and collapsed behind. As it turned out, Ramirez had been buried pretty shallow, the Control Tower had collapsed _just so_ that his outside work station had been his saving grace.

And then.

Ramirez shoved aside the last bit of debris and took a deep gasp of open air. Air that was thick with the smell of smoke and ash, surrounded by utter chaos. Uncontrolled fires burned from ruptured fuel bunkers, the entire airstrip itself was cratered and littered with twisted wreckage and there, somewhere off in the distance, part of the residential area burned with flickers of bright red in greasy black smoke. And there, through the dim sky, hunks of gray metal descending through banks of smoke.

It wasn't over. Not by a long shot.

 _Earlier that day, International Space Station_

June couldn't help but watch in horror at the massive plumes of smoke rising across the planet. It didn't matter what her captors had told her, all their promises of "peace" and "Securing an uneventful diplomatic relationship." Everything had been a lie. She'd watched, less than an hour earlier, as swarms of angular black ships, some of them mere motes in the distance, other so close she could make out the distinctive lines of their solar panels, descending through the atmosphere. And then the smoke started streaking into the atmosphere, and she knew.

Yet throughout it all, one of their boarders, the one who had removed his helmet, had stuck by her throughout this. The rest of the crew was going about their duties, far away from any observation modules. And yet, here she was, with her "guardian" clamped onto a nearby wall panel, silently watching.

She turned to her guardian/captor, a mix of outrage and horror written across her face. "Why are you-"

He looked at her, no, _through_ her, through the observation deck and down to Earth's surface. "We were at war, when we came here." His English was still strangely accented and slightly stilted, and yet, he had learned enough in less than a week to carry on a conversation. "When we made our way to this place, we found hostility. We knew it would not be peaceful. So we struck first." He looked at her, flint grey eyes seeming to bore right into her soul.

 _Curtive. He said his name was Leaido Curitve._ Flashed through June's mind.

"We intended to minimize casualties, a show of force. Strike the military, cripple infrastructure, show we could strike where ever, whenever." Those flint grey eyes continued their cold stare, their hard bore into her soul. "A quick action was necessary, we are to believe there would be hostilies, and they have been neutralized. A dialogue can begin between us."

June wasn't sure what terrifed her more, the burning planet below her, or the stone cold conviction in Leaido's face. "But this, this is..."

"Necessary, we are far from home, alone, cut off. We mus-" Curtive was cut off from a buzzing in his head set, to which we he responded with a curt phrase in whatever home language he spoke, followed by Curtive locking his helmet in place with a hiss.

"We are moving this crew to a seure location. Please comply."

The threat of _Or else_ hung in the recirculated air, and with a nervous swallow, June nodded.


	10. Chapter 9

AN: After a month + hiatus, daddy's home! (Read as: Paramedic School kicked my ass, but I finally have some breathing room)

 _MCAS Miramar, March 13th 2015_

The sun hung low, bloated a sickly red by the thick smoke coiling through the evening spring sky. Somewhere off in the distance yet another ammo bunker detonated, the crackle of ammunition cooking off mixing with the deep _whumpfs_ of heavier ordinance and everywhere else, sirens, both fire and MP's, edging out the audio cacaphony to near unbearable levels.

Sergeant Penske has had a hell of a day. Shuffled from Pendleton to Miramar for "security concerns" and "material density" _whatever the fuck that means_ , he'd spent nearly a week on out-processing, then in processing paperwork, and barely two days on quick reaction drills.

And today? _Today, those drills can go fuck themselves._

Day started as any other, woke up, went to PT, made some coffee, fortified it a bit with something stronger, then drove around his post for fuck knows how long. By noon he was dozing off to the constant background chatter of some E-3 excited over the heightened security and then -

And then the world exploded. Whatever, whoever they were, screamed out of no where, chaos, mass carnage. Penske watched with muted horror as whatever air they fieled was swatted out of the sky by brilliant green, internally cheered when one of theirs went down...then back to horror when one spiraled out of control and dropped it's payload over one of the residential blocks.

An eternity seemed to pass before the raid ended, leaving only the panicked screaming of his lower enlisted partner and distant explosions. Finally, his radio crackled to life, ending that agonizing eternity.

 _"_ All active units, proceed to nearest designated strongpoint, I say again, all active units..."

Instinct kicked in and Penske made a grab for the map in his car door, flopping across the lap of the panicked MP to his right to get at it, then mentally comapred the cross streets to how far they were to the strongpoint and... _there._ He wordlessly started the engine, slapped the map into the chest of his partner, and then he saw it. Angular grey shapes descending through the clouds of smoke.

The day wasn't over. Not by a long shot.

 _Sentinel Landing Craft Gamma-2, above sentient military installation_

Sergeant Cadlan did all she could to shove every ounce of nervousness down deep, where her men couldn't see it. Seventy five Imperial Army troopers sat crammed into the Sentinel's hull, occasionally jostling in their crash-webbing from near misses by the local sentinets. Somewhere in the back of the craft lower ranking troopers muttered amongst themselves, occasionally silenced by a jab and sharp comment by higher ranking troopers, business as usual. Cadlan closed her eyes and tried to relax despite the shudders of the craft descending through the atmosphere and enemy fire, normally she would bark an order and enforce silence, but this was wholly different. She remembered her first combat deployment, back in the waning days of the Empire, how nervous and chatty she was despite the orders shouted over the bay. What harm could rookies chattering amongst themselves do?

Her respite was interrupted by the shrill wail of klaxon, a harsh green light flooded the trooper bay.

"Two minutes 'till touch down, good luck out there"

The click of harnesses and whine of blasters being prepped filled the bay, and the chatter increased to deafening levels, drowning out everything else. With an internal sigh, Cadlan unbuckled her webbing and pounded the heel of her hand against the walls of the trooper bay.

"Hey! Listen up!"

The noise in the bay quickly died out, save for the occasional click of a harness snapping.

"We're about to touch some real hostile ground, maybe _you_ haven't felt it," Cadlan hammered the wall again, "But that ain't turbulence out there. These sentients are shooting. _At us._ So listen up you sithspit pukes,"

Cadlan could feel herself chanelling her former NCO in her speech, and through him, some lineage streching back time immemorial to the first person to try and tough-love some sense into raw recruits.

"When we hit ground look for me or another Sergeant, think about nothing else. Keep your heads down, find us, shoot anything looking at you funny, and you might just make it through the day. You got me?"

A howl ran through the troopers, and Cadlan smiled to herself. _Oh yeah, they want it_ , _but not enough._

"You all sound like a bargain schutta, I said, _**you got me?!**_ "

This time the howl echoed throughout the bay, seventy five troopers pumped up, some of them for their first engagement. The light in the bay shifted from green to red as the landing craft shuddered to a stop against the ground, the ramp cracked and groaned lower, letting in the heady scent of detonated explosives and smoke.

"Alright you sleemo's, you wanna live forever? On me, look for your NCO's!"

And with a roar, they charged into the bloody sunset.

 _MCAS Miramar_

They all watched the craft touch down near their strongpoint, a fact that Penske lameneted geatly – if only internally.

"Awright, eyes up! Light those mother fuckers up the second they step off, I don't give a fuck what with, you light them up!"

On the inside Penske was tearing himself apart, he'd seen whatever that landing craft was eat AT rounds, AA fire, pretty much anything thrown at it, and still it kept coming. He crossed his fingers and rubbed the rosary beads in his pocket, then shouldered his M16 and watched the craft through it's BUIS.

Then a high pitched whine stole his attention, a brown and white blur swept over the concrete barriers they were using for cover and Penske felt his head jerk back slightly, followed by a rush of air as whatever it was swept through their lines. His hand instinctually shot up to his head, feeling for any kind of wound, feeling only close cropped hair with no blee-

"Motherfuckers stole my cover! God fucking dammit!" Penske snapped his head to the right to check over the other men at his barricade, only for his gaze to be drawn to an oblong shape near the edge of the concrete. "Fuck! Grenade!"

He snaped his arm out and managed to snag the Marine to his right by the neck, kicking off to the left just as the charge detonated. Penske felt an immense surge of heat and pressure blow him further than his meager leap could've taken him, the Marine he nabbed rolled with him, smacking him in the face with their own weapon or the ground, he wasn't sure. Finally, the world stopped spinning and he dared to lift his head, spitting asphalt, dust, and blood. The Marine beneath him stared blankly at him, a mix of fluids trickled from his ears and nose. A medical class in Penske's distant past screamed _blast injury!,_ and he slapped the palm of his hand against the Marine's chest and pointed to the ground.

"Stay here! Gonna have a look up!"

It wasn't the best cover, not in the slightest. The explosion had hurled them to a slight swell of dirt a handful of feet away from the barricade, now thuroughly pulverized by whatever explosive was used. And that was when Penske finally noticed the battle raging.

Several marines lay motionless near their barricades, dark burns through their body armor. Brilliant scarlet bolts whined above his head, mixed with the clatter of gunfire. The surviving marines were engaged in furious combat, the deep thump of 203's mixed with the higher crack of 5.56 clashing against the return fire of the aggressor force. It was all strangely beautiful to Penske, and for a split second he absorbed in the chaos of it all, the crackling gunfire, the whining of whatever the scarlet beams were, the slow screams of the wounded. He rode the adrenaline high until a scarlet bolt smacked into the dirt close to him, the acrid smell of ozone and charred plants raising him out of his funk.

With a tap on the chest of his wounded comrade, he rolled into a prone position and sighted his weapon, spotting the nearest grey shape and... _fired._

 _It stumbled, fell to the ground, then rolled over, calling in some language that felt oddly familiar._

 _Fired._

 _It staggered, then kept moving. A crimson bolt struck through a nearby marine, he fell without a sound._

 _Fired._

 _They were closer now. One tumbled, unmoving. One of it's comrades crouched to check it, and he fired again. It too fell, unmoving._

 _Fired._

 _They were nearly on top of him now. His shot missed, and a bolt hissed by his head, making him scamble and duck._

 _Looked up. Fired._

 _Missed completely. There were on him now. Penske fought as hard as he could, tried to grab for his knife on his belt. Two grabbed his arms and pinned him, another pointed it's weapon at him, barking commands in that familiar language. His eyes darted to the wounded Marine, one of them had already kicked his rifle away. The Marine's hands were weakly raised, his face shaped into a pleading whisper. They shot him. Penske could hear the sizzle of his flesh for several seconds after._

 _He looked up at his captor, the one pointing the gun in his face._

 _"Please," He begged, a nameless fear welling up inside him. "Please don't."_

 _Whomever it was grimaced and looked back at another grey clad figure, letting loose a string of that familiar language. The figure nodded at it, and it lowered it's weapon._

 _"Oh god, thank you," Penske started._

 _The thing holding him hostage turned it's weapon around and cracked him in the head with a short stroke. The world swam, and blackness greeted Penske._

AN: A little short, but here you go! Good stuff to read while I get back in the swing of things!


	11. Chapter 10

_Somewhere, some local time, Sol-3_

Ouribril woke to a harsh flourescent glare and a clister of the local sentients gathered behind some kind of glass. He slapped the side of his temple, trying to jump start his memory from whatever latest bit he could grasp at.

 _We were shot down. The bomber split in halfe, Eani-...I mean, Stesta was missing. I need to find her, there was a dessert..._

The cage hummed and a jolt of elecritcity surged through it, launching him to the floor and making him spasm uncontrollably. After what seemed like an eternity the current ceased, and he looked up at the assembled sentients on the other side of the glass.

"What is this? Why are you doi-"

Ouribril's words were cut off by another surge of electricity, a surge high enough to send him sprawling across the floor of his cell, muscles firing in uncontrollable spasms. The pain of it all made the world melt, colors running in the edge of his vision. The last thing his conscious mind grasped was a single sentient looming over the glass, a smirk on it's face and some kind of pad in it's hand.

 _She looks so much like we do,_ Was the last thought through his head before he slipped into the merciful grasp of unconsciousness

 _X-Com HQ, March 13th, 2015_

Doctor Vahlen grinned over the results the alien was feeding her, the probes she had attached to it's temporal region had paid off, all likeness to human phsyiology withstanding. A spike in brain acticity when subjected to pain, another spike when it had gasped in whatever language it spoke shortly after, with this data she could quantify the invading x-rays as responsive to external stimuli and some form of sentient, and yet...

 _If only the Commander had authorized intercranial implants_.

Despite all her arguments, that said implants would be able to read the subconcious impulses of the brain and bring up any intel a conscious mind could hide, the Commander had rejected her proposal, insisting on convetional stimuli in their interrogations.

 _Crude, ineffecient, and slow. Yet..._

Despite every bit if cumbersome interogation, their captured X-Ray had consistently called out one thing, an "Eanika", whatever that was. Dr. Vahlen made a note of it in her report and flagged it as "priority", whatever this Eanika was, it proved the key to cracking their prisoner, direct electrical stimulation of nerve endings or no.


	12. Chapter 11

_AN: Sorry about the delay! IRL has kicked my butt super hard, like, REALLY hard_

 _ISD Indomitable, in orbit above Sol-3_

Reports were feeding into the birdge at lightning speed, every incursion reported near universal success with minor losses across the board, each raid had struck hard and crushed a mjaority of the opposition. And yet, one report caught Arksends eye.

Earlier, one of the sabatoge missions had met effective resistance, and the exact same resistance had engaged them in the air, even succeding in shooting down several of their bombers and their escorts over the Southwest region of a continent.

Captain Arksend tapped the combat entry and scrolled through the holo-footage, stopping it at the clearest bit he could manage. A single sentient, female, probably, was firing some type of slugthrower at the scouting party, an emblem was stenciled on her breastplate, some type of crossed lines with words scrolled beneath it. With a flick of his finger, he sent the image to the autotranslate, a chirp notified him of success less than a second later, the text under the stencil highlighted

 _Vigilo Confido – I am Watchful_

A part of Arksend's mind prickled, a tickle of his brain he hadn't felt since the early years of the Rebellion. He grinned at the feeling, at the implications of such. _An effective yet hopeless resistance_ His mind churned, delighted at the opportunity.

 _Just like the clear cut early days, a rebellion against an Empire._

 _March 13th, god knows where_

The world swam back into focus, and Sergeant Penske fought to interpret what he saw. A small black orb with far too many spikey bits hovered in front of him with a menacing hum, one of the grey clad figures he had been shooting at – _was it hours or day_? _-_ stood behind it.

"Now, I am loate to do this to you," It said, it's accent slow and hissing on certain words, "Ssssergeant...Pen-skii? But if you know, my men are dying. Dying, Pen-skii"

It loomed closer, and Penske could see the slight swell of breasts in the uniform, and the strangely human face covered by goggles and helmet.

 _Just another grunt, just someone like me_

The whine of the floating orb coming closer snapped his focus back to the snetinent, and her questions.

"Now, Pen-skii, your men are dying, too. We both know what this means." She pulled a chair from the side of the room and saddled it, snapping her goggles off and staring into his eyes. "Are of the men be the dy-"

Penske almost chuckled to himself as she fiddled with some device on her belt, not even noticing the fact that she spoke near perfect english before.

She finally finished a vigorous string of what was probably cursing and vigorous smacks on the belt-mounted device. "Issued equipment, am I right?"

Penske glanced at the belt, then back at her, the realization dawning on him.

"Look, Sergeant," She reached up and pulled her goggles off, setting them on the front of her helmet. "You and me? Same people. Don't want our kids, so do me a favor and let us know where you're set up. Less death, yeah?"

She gestured to the floating, spikey ball. "I hate these things too, but if you don't give me anything, well..." She shrugged, "It does it's thing and you'll talk. So, Pen-skii," The floating orb moved closer. "Tell me the good stuff, and you'll sit in a comfortable cell. Don't, and this thing...well, it'll do _it's_ thing. Which is not fun."

Penske clmpaed his mouth shut and shook his head, perfectly emulating a pouting two year old. With a sigh and a shrug, Sergeant Cadlan left the room.

The screams echoed through the corridor for hours


	13. Chapter 12

AN: I leave the Commander's gender deliberately ambiguous because that's how it is in-game (Any previous slips non-withstanding), imagine them how you like because after all, in XCom, the Commander is **YOU**.

ANx2: After mulling it over some more, I'll probably be taking this chapter down and replacing it with one more in line with the previous chapters, I haven't felt too happy with how plotting this is turning out, until then, enjoy this chapter!

 _X-Com Field HQ, Pacific Northwest, November 2016_

 _A nightmare had awoken in the world, the war gone to shit. Despite every effort, every little foot hold X-Com had won, they lost by miles Their surgical strikes only counted for the ripples in a pond after a stone was dropped, seizing tech or VIPs while the worldwide front ground on, crushing every little bit before it._

 _By now, they knew most of NATO couldn't be counted on to provide effective support. Russia and China, even less so, these invaders, this "Empire", had hit them harder, forcing them at gunpoint to sign non-aggression pacts, cutting them and their near endless supplies of recruits and supplies off at the tap. The world had never looked in worse shape, not even in the darkest times of the World Wars._

 _The holo-globe flickered above the command center, displaying most of the world swathed in a swirling red. Chunks of the world still shone an iridescent green, tiny specks of a world that was that had held on both to rationality and had held out against the coming tide. The American and Canadian west coast, most of Mexico, Iceland, little chunks here and there of Europe, and the entirety of Scotland._

 _The Commander smiled at the bitter irony of that. The Scots had fought to man, taking nearly 70% casualties in exchange for maybe a 20% ratio, and yet, they stood strong and unified. No division, not like the United State's Senate splitting and opening the very brief, very bloody, second American Civil War – of which only the territories that had declared itself Cascadia and the New California Republic remained independent._

 _In short, it was a shit show._

 _Word had come down through the grapevine, a network of resistance fighters and civilian sympathizers, that this "Empire" was conscripting civilians, and yet, not in the brutal domineering way. Better rations, delivered, promises of advanced medical care, delivered, reduced crime, delivered, with a jackboot efficiency._

 _And despite that smooth transition, it ground at the back of the Commander's mind – not that the people were subjugated, governments flipped all the time – but that whatever force had decided to exert itself on this flip of government was **better** at doing it._

 _They were losing the war, both the military front and the home front. Even still.._

The Commander flipped through a series of new and recent reports, someone known as the "Operator" had been feeding them reliable intel on the military side of the Empire – troop movements, supply transports, weapon caches, all the good stuff they needed to slow the inevitable movement.

 _We're like a large rock to a combine harvester_. _Jam the blades, even break them, but eventually, it'll just keep coming..._

The console chirped, drawing the Commander out of his thoughts. A message scrolled across the screen in stilted, formal English. It had been far too long since the Council Spokesman had contacted them, and it was good to finally have some guidance in the current matter.

 _I'm good at following orders and leading my men, not making those orders,_ The Commander bitterly notted, then turned their eyes to the screen.

 _A contingent of the upper echelons of command, are making a grandiose speech in the tastelessly dubbed "Unity Park". Dear sir, please take the following actions_

 _-Secure external comm links by skulduggery or force, however you see fit_

 _-Upload attached file_

 _Attached file?_ The Commander scrolled to the bottom of the message, there he found a file bearing all the telltale marks of being an Imperial file format, a string of Aurebesh characters. _Thank god for Shen, or we'd never get our tech to talk to theirs._

The Commander scrolled back up to the objective list, and paused at the last listed action.

 _-And for the love of all you hold in your religion, assassinate that fornicating Grand Admiral Arksend, if at all possible. -Operator_

The Commander smiled at that, whomever the Operator was had just let slip who they were, some subordinate chaffing under their command. Which reminded the Commander...

 _Need to tell Bradford to shave that stubble he's been sporting._

With another flick of their fingers, the Commander called up a list of X-Com's remaining troops and gave deployment orders, forwarding the report plus attached file along with it. With a sigh, the Commander sank back in their chair as crude sirens and airhorns sounded throughout the encampment, accompanied by the sounds of pounding boots.

 _X-Com Field HQ, Pacific Northwest, November 2016_

Hannah Ross nearly glared at the two rookies in her squad, new additions after the Commander had authorize larger strike teams. The idea was sound, more men, more damage, but her previous team had been a rotating mix of experienced ground pounders of SF, and now? They were letting anyone who could hold a gun and was decently good at shooting in.

"Alright boots! Listen up," Hannah paced in front of her men, noting the wide eyed expression from the two new to her squad. "Yes, I mean _you_ , you two. And the rest of you, prick your ears."

She pulled a bulky rifle from it's sling behind her back and held it forward so all the assembled troops could see it.

"This here is a Mark One Pulse-Wave Rifle, Shen churned 'em out in the last couple months, our own engineering ingenuity," She took a side glance at her assembled men – most had a captured weapon slung at their side, Imperial weaponry that had since run low on the power cells they had used as ammunition.

"So what we've got? It's a little under what they have, but it'll do a fuck load better against them!" The rookie's faces lit up, but the veterans her squad remained hard as stone. Every attempt at reverse engineering their tech had resulted in power ineffficent "One and done" weapons, or something that would blow up in your face. They'd taken to scavening weapons and their ammunition whenever they won an engagement.

"So this!" Hannah postured like a circus showman, ejecting the power cell and slapping another in it's place. "Is our answer to them, we're on equal footing for once. We shoot at them from three hundred meters out, they're gonna drop dead"

"For once," she muttered under her breath.

Hannah took a second to scan over her men, the veteran's stony glare had faded, and the rookies were almost glowing with excitement. Here it was, a weapon that could come close to matching what the Imperials had, something that could even the playing field, if only a little bit.

"But we're a special case, y'see, so if you fucks would remember to check your alerts..." She sighed as six people, even her vets, dug in pockets for various bits of hardware. "We're on a good op. Communications disruption, maybe assassination, all the stuff you signed up for, it's all here.

She grinned as a murmur ran through her team, and smiled even brighter internally over the prospect of finally taking _direct_ action, a decapitating strike.

"So get all the shit you need together, wheels up in thirty." With a cheer, they charged off to the basketball court that served as a landing pad.

 _Unity Park, formerly Central Park, North America, November 2016_

Captain Tymon fidgeted in his seat. It had been months since Grand Admiral Arksend _He interally rolled his eyes, the man had delusions of granduere_ had appointed him head of Planetary Security, and as it turned out, the uniform based off CorSec was stifling in a sping time "Indian Summer". The humidity and heat clawed at him, the heavy dress jacket clinging to his chest in the moisture.

And there he was, in his immaculate white uniform wreathed in gold cords. Coming to the stage waving at the cheering crowd, before finally assuming the mic covered pulpit.

"Sentients of this planet," Arksend began, leaning into the mics. "We came here wounded, _bleeding_. Our initial act of aggression was but an impulse, a kneejerk reaction, but now? We come _in peace._ "

Arksend waited for the cheering to swell, among them were carfully placed agents that would rouse the crowd as needed.

"With your help, we can return from where we came, with your help, we can uplift this world, we your help, we can give you what you want. Your planet, it's people, are explorers, and with your help, we can give you the means to finally stretch out beyond the confinments of your solar system and find _What. Is. Out. There._ "

Tymon cringed internally at the declaration. He knew exactly what it meant, endless staff meetings had hammered it into his mind. The Empire, or whatever Arksend had imagined, was here to stay/

 _We're no better than the warlords._

Arksend continued his speech, going on and on about the benefits of unification, what it would bring. Tymon almost fell asleep when...

The high whine of an energy weapon interrupted the speech. Arksend dove to the side of his stage, nearly a moment too late. From his seat, Tymon could hear the sizzle of burnt flesh and the scream of pain.

Arksend wriggled his way to the end of the stage and rolled off as heads snapped to where they thought the bolt had come from, only to snap back as the projection of the stand fizzled and changed into a shadowy figure.

 _People of Earth_ , It's voice was a distorted, heavily electronic buzz. _The Empire does not come to help you. They seek to emulate their own fractured state, a state defeated by a Rebellion._

Tymon could see various techs scrambling over cables, janking out what they could as the message continued.

 _This Rebellion was like you. Under armed. Under staffed. And yet, they took down and Empire._

The image fizzled as the techs finally found the right wiring for the display.

 _Rise. Rise against them. They play Wa-_

The image fizzled out amongst murmurs and gasps from the crowd. With a sigh, Captain Tymon rose from his seat.

 _It's going to be a long night_.

AN: Yeah, I did a bit of a wookieepedia binge, I substituted Laser tier weapons for Pulse-Wave (Which is the precussor for blasters, according to said wookieepedia binge)


	14. Chapter 13

AN: Guess who decided to just do some anachronistic order! This guy! Well, more accurately, I couldn't find ways to plot that last chapter out, so hopefully these bits help work out that writer's block, eh?

 _ISD Indomitable, In orbit above Sol-3, 2015_

Captain Tymon looked over the assembled officers, notable were those attending by holo-comm, their field uniforms, washed with static as they were, stood out from the rest of them. All eyes were upon him.

"Gentlemen, I know we've had this conversation before, but in light of new information, here's what we know now..."

 _X-Com Headquarters, March 13_ _th_ _, 2015_

The Commander looked over the assembled staff, notable among them were the fresh faces, the rising stars in their departments. Hard to believe it started less than two weeks ago with Bradford, Vallen, Shen, and a crate fulls of surplus weaponry.

The hologlobe shimmer above the table glowed an angry red over the areas out of contact and quite possibly, out of their control. Even still, one of them had talked, spilled everything within the first hour of their "interrogation" and the stakes thudded down on the Commander, the cost of not meeting them burned at the back of their mind. And yet, the new information they had changed the game entirely...

"I know we've had a talk about this before, but in light of new information, here's what we now know..."

 _American Southwest, March 14_ _th_ _2015_

Eanika uncurled from the dusty ball she'd laid in for hours. She'd felt it something smack the back of her skull, an endless pain of shocks and bludgeons and spilled words and other things far beyond words, at the edge of it, something or someone screaming in the most absolute pain she could imagine.

With a sharp gasp of breath, she opened her eyes to a brilliant desert sunset, orange sliding into purple and blue, sifted across distant mountains and rises in the land. Something off in the distance burned with thick clouds of oily black smoke. Further off were the distant whines of TIE engines and the high chatter if their main guns. She reached for helmet, her fingers groping at sand and failing to find any hint of smooth curves. With a grunt, she slapped her hands to her comm unit wrapped around her ear.

"DB-213 to anyone receiving, do you copy?"

The channel hissed with static, occasionally punctuated by deep thumps of _something_ far off, before a voice broke through the swirl of noise.

"DB-213, this is NH-223, I'm with an army unit to your south east," The voice paused as an explosion crackled over the comm. "Unknown klicks out, look to the horizon, standby."

A flare shot into the air and erupted into a brilliant red, slowly drifting to the surface. One of the local sentient's aircraft screamed in and fired a line of fat, glowing rounds near the flare. Eanika braced for the worst.

Finally, the comm crackled back to life.

"DB-213, if you're still receiving, move to the flare, you're officially attached to the Imperial Army for the duration of our groundside opperations."

With an internal groan, Eanika hauled herself up and made for the flare.

 _Imperial Army? Am I a ground pounder now?_

 _American Southwest, March 14_ _th_ _2015_

Sergeant Curtive lit a T'bac Cigar and aggressively puffed. Less than a couple days ago they'd taken a sentient orbital station, today they'd crushed some kind of airfield, and now they were on search and rescue? It almost make him wish he was up there with that cute local from the station...

His thought process was interrupted by someone, Imperial Army – _We're attached to the Imperial Army, I hope someone upstairs is counting irony, because I am –_ saluted and brought herself to stiff attention.

"Sir, we've received orders that there's a downed pilot in the area, we're to stay put and -"

A flare burst into brilliant light above their position. Curtive chucked the cigar and tackled whoever-she-was to the ground, just in time, one of the local aircraft roared in and spat a thick line of rounds.

He counted to ten and looked up, sand dunes pocked with craters greeted him. Most of the unit was down, either groaning or completely silent.

"First off," He began as he hauled himself off the officer, "Never send a flare up in a combat zone, it's a massive 'Shoot me now' target. Second off."

Curtive looked to the craters and noted his medic scrambling from shallow hole to shallow hole.

"Second off, never call me sir, I work for a living, dammit!"

 _White House, March 14_ _th_ _, 2015_

Ned sat under the critical gaze of the president, occasionally letting out a nervous twitch. There was complete silence, far worse than the full on screaming match he'd expected, or the dark room with far too many sharp things...

"So tell me Ned," The President began, leafing through an absolute mountain of paperwork on his desk. "Do you believe this is self defense? We've had attacks across the globe, definite military action, and you're the one who's supposed to be in the know."

The President stood up and leaned over the desk, Ned had never seen nor heard such a friendly voice edged with such ice.

"Dose this strike you as Self-Defense? I've been holding the National Guard back _on your recommendation_ , but everything I've got on my desk ? He gestured to the stack of folders, "Tell me I'm wrong. Go on."

Ned swallowed, hard enough to put the stereotypical "Swallowed a lump in the movies" to shame. Here was hostile race of invaders and he'd _massively fucked up._

"Ahh, Mister President, I...uhm, I mean, we, suggest that..."

He was silenced by a fist thumping onto paper, paper that Ned had simply ignored until now.

"I've got too many reports, mister Corrville to suggest otherwise," The Presidents voice had stopped stopped assuming his warm crowd pleasing tone, and was more like a dagger of ice. "Whatever you say from here on? I don't care. I value your input on these..."

The President hovered over the words, carefully considering each one.

"These...aggressors, but the fact remains, they have struck several cities. Caution in the face of aggression isn't my strong suit." The President paused, "I'm having the National Guard on combat readiness, and I'll pass your information down the line."

Ned swallowed, hard. Something in the back of his head told him this wasn't the end of it.

 _American Southwest, March 14_ _th_ _2015_

Eanika scramble from scrub brush to scrub brush, pausing every now and again to listen for voices. Some of the local sentients, she wasn't sure how many, had been hunting her on her kilometers long scramble towards the flare, often times coming uncomfortably close before that increasingly familiar thing at the back of her mind told her to duck into _that_ bush, or drop into _this_ gully. The flare couldn't have been more than ten kilometers away, and yet she'd spent most of the afternoon dodging from one bush to another.

The feeling at the back of her mind, less a tickle and more a scream, made her dive into the nearest dip of sand, eyes up and with her hand wrapped tight on her blaster. One of the local sentients crested the top of the depression and flicked on a rifle mounted flash light, scanning through the sunset lengthened shadows. The circle of light swept closer to her and Eanika squeezed her eyes shut and subconsciously willed herself to be smaller, any minute now and they'd see her, she'd be shot or worse, and -

The high whine of a long-blaster filled the air and the sentient tumbled into the dip, just inches from her. It twitched and gurgled for a brief few seconds, then lay still. The sentients behind it barked something in their language and fired off in the distance, and Eanika caught sight of one, with it's damned sigil painted on the front of it's armor.

Eanika scrambled from the hole she was in and made a break to the blaster bolts, occasionally glancing behind her. The sentients were more worried in firing back than in her, the mint green glow on the crest of sand grew closer until she ran headfirst into a swell, mindlessly scrambling up. A white armored glove grabbed her shoulder and hauled her up the rest of the way, firmly flopping her well beyond hostile fire. She found herself looking looking into the black eyed helmet of a stormtrooper, one wearing the orange pauldron of a sergeant.

"Are you DB whatever?" The stromtrooper's voice was washed with static from his vocoder, "My names Curtive, and we -" Eanika noted a mix of pearlescent white stormtrooper armor and gray Imperial Army firing back at her pursuers. "Are here to get you out. What happened to your co-pilot?"

She looked back across a desert lit by a mix of setting sun and brilliant red and green. Eanika sadly shook her head at the stromtrooper.

"He's..they...they captured him. Hours ago, when we first crashed."

She heard the static hum of a comm unit as the stormtrooper relayed what she said, then felt a warm glove on her shoulder.

"We're here to get you home _and_ your co-pilot. Don't worry about it."

With that much said, Eanika closed her eyes and slipped into the merciful embrace of sleep.

 _American Southwest, March 14th 2015_

Sergeant Curtive felt awful lying to her like that. Here was a pilot, a pilot who had spent who knows how long running from the enemy, and he'd just promised her that her co-pilot would be found? He felt that caustic slime rise up in his chest, the same slime he felt every op when he had lied to someone. He'd lied for the good of the mission.

The crack of a round whizzing by his head brought him back down to reality, his fingers seeking out the com units in his helmet.

"Give me a sitrep, how's the fight going?"

For a second, his channel was awash with static and gunfire, finally broken by one of his men.

"They're down to two and running, should we engage?"

Curtive looked to the pilot and fought down the urge to follow, his squad and over a quarter of the Army detachment were all that was left of their original mission of retrieving a downed pilot. In other words, not worth it.

"Negative, we've got what we came for, tell the men their to assemble on my position, we're going home."

 _American Southwest, March 14th 2015_

Hannah Ross glared at the ship that roared into the X-Ray's position, had she heavier weaponry or a more futile sense of preservation of the men assigned to her, she would've ordered a shot at it. As it was, she had three men walking and one walking wounded, no heavy weaponry, and no means to reliably engage the x-rays.

 _Capture one guy, and call it a win, manpower cost? Fuck that!_

She spat into the desert sand as the ship, it's cargo secure, she bet, lifted off and flew off towards the horizon, the silhouette lit by a sun sinking into night.

 _All this for one guy they got hours ago, six of ours dead, for one other person?_

She fought down the bile and reached into a pouch on her armor, drawing out a radio. "Home, this is Menace 2-5, target has let the AO and we have wounded, I say again, we have wounded."

With a sigh, she sank into the sand and ignored every bit of venom Bradford hurled across the radio, instead looking towards the dusky horizon and the Sky-ranger that would come to pick them up.

 _It's gonna be a fucking long war._

AN: Sorry for the delay, I've pretty much got one day a week to write, so here it is!

ANx2: And yes, to spoil everyone a bit, Eanika is force sensitive. Her dream is gonna roll into PSI testing, so look forward to that ;D


	15. Chapter 14

_Marth 17th, 2015_

Sergeant Penske woke screaming, the memory of various poisons and far too many sharp things lingered as he shook sleep from reality and took in his surroundings. Some kind of fenced-in enclosure, multiple people huddled against a twilit sky and, _he took a breath of air_ , none of that chemically clean air aboard where ever they had him.

In fact, it was the furthest thing from that, beyond the odor of whatever-this-was was the dry smell of scrubland and desert, the sharp scent of sage brush and hot ground. The smell alone lurched him up, taking in the surroundings. Twisted metal embedded in gouged earth, _this was a junkyard at some point_ , beyond that, guards in grey uniforms patrolled the length of fence keeping him in, and beyond _that_ , a small town wrapped in rocky desert hills, with a sun rapidly sinking below them.

One of the men huddled off to his side shuffled towards him and stuck a water bottle in his face, shaking it slightly.

"You've been out for a while. Want a sip?"

Penske looked up and squinted his eyes in the gloom, an olive skinned woman hovered over him. With a nod, he made a grab for the bottle, screwing the cap off and drinking greedily from it.

"They've been giving you a saline drip for the last couple days, you were under pretty hard. We," She jerked her head back to the huddled group. "Weren't sure you'd wake up. You came in pretty beat up. So, uh..." She dropped her voice to near a whisper. "You a soldier? Someone important?"

Reflex and survival training overorde everything he wanted to say. "Penske, Jack. Sergeant, United States Marine Corps." With a mental shake of his head, he fought his way back to reality. "Sorry, who are you?"

She smiled at him and helped him sit up, carefully monitoring how many sips he took from the water bottle. "June, June Rodriguez. I _was_ a crewmember on the International Space Station," She chuckled internally when he gagged on that water, that line generally had that effect in bars. "They nabbed us," June nodded back at the huddled group. "Probably a bit before they nabbed you. We were, y'know, up _there_ for a bit, but then they stuck us back on terra firma a little bit after. Not even sure how long, haven't had my watch in forever."

June glanced at the guards patrolling, licked her lips, and dropped her voice again. "Can you get us out of here? We're all scientists, not soldiers."

Jack glanced over at the huddle, they were all dressed in polo shirts, some of them adorned with what he could only guess as the year or mission number. He looked into the sinking twilight and noticed other fenced-in enclosures.

"What can you tell me about this place?" He whispered, his eyes constantly tracking the guards that wound their way around the chainlink fence. "As in, how many people are here, how new these fences are, things like that?"

June bit her lip and gently shrugged. "All I know is that this _was_ a junkyard, there's a town out there, and we're somewhere it's hot as hell in the daytime." She looked over to another enclosure and nodded to it."Those there? I think they're police, dark blue and patches. And them," She nodded off to another chainlink cage. "Military, for sure, they were really noisy when they came in, I don't think they all speak English though. Guards actually had to come in and "settle" them down. And us?"

June stabbed a finger into the junk strewn ground. "Us I think, we were on board. So we're the special, seperate group." She shrugged again. "Or maybe they tossed you in here because I was medically certifide, it's anyones game."

Penske grinned an evil grin, a grin that chilled June to the core.

"So they've got us locked up by group? Good. Now we know who to break out _first._ "

 _Groundside, Sol-3_

Private Jaxin sighed and kicked a rock. Here he was, Imperial Army, with his unit promised deployment groundside, and he was on guard duty? The reality of it made his blood boil, even more so when his datapad got pictures from his friends in other units, other units actually sent to the front. All of them boiled down to "Saw some serious action, still kicking!" or "These locals know how to cook!" often accompanied by a plate full of whatever passed for food here.

He sighed and kicked a rock, running a hand across the chain link of his patrol. He hadn't even been assigned to one of the high risk enclosures, doubly so for the one that had to quell riots near every other day. No, command just _had_ to stick him on the one that was full of scientists, just _had_ to give him the quietest, most unexciting detail in the whole camp.

Jaxin looked off into the distance, to the town with it's bright lights burning against a desert landscape. Spast, he'd give anything to be there, at least maintaining curfew would be more exciting than this!

He dimly noted the blue flare of some kind of landing jets in the distance and cocked his head toward the headset in his helmet. After several minutes of silence he shrugged and continued on patrol.

 _Probably some bigwig shutta here to "gauge morale." Pfft._

 _Hours ago, X-Com HQ, March 17th, 2015_

The Commander looked over the assembled staff and, with a sinking feeling, the remaining troops. With how many casualties X-Com had had, the Commander could probably count them on one hand.

"Here's our current state of affairs," The Commander began to pace the platform that served as a podium in the hangar. "We are losing this war," The Commander held their hands up to stave off the mutter that ran through the crowd. "Through no fault of our own. We are fighting a technologically advanced enemy, and we are approaching it as a conventional conflict, something we can't continue. From here on out X-Com is effectively a guerilla organization."

Another mutter ran through the crowd, silenced by a raise of the Commander's hand. "We can't fight them head on, X-Com just doesn't have the manpower. From here on out, we will focus on hard targets, VIP's, cracks in their armor so we can open the gap. We aren't here to win the war, but to make it possible so it _can be won_."

An small applause wrippled through the crowd, again silenced by a raise of the Commander's hand. "I hate to be so honest, but Sergeant Ross, report to briefing with your surviving men. I have something you might be interested in."

` Hannah tried her best to sink into the crowd as all eyes turned to her. She was a leader, and yet the Commander's attention had turned her into a goddamn schoolgirl. _It better be worth it._

 _Briefing Room, X-Com HQ, March 17th 2015_

Her surviving men were a total of five. She'd led a full squad, all nine, into multiple engagements, and every time they'd walked away with a only a few survivors, including herself. And of those survivors, some had washed out.

And her she was. Waiting on the Commander's "special" briefing, a briefing she half feared was a dressing down and dismissal, all in front of her own men. She swallowed, hard, as the Commander entered and scanned the faces assembled, then braced herself as the Commander nodded and brought their tablet up, flicking the screen to send a file to the briefing room's screen.

The screen was lit with a satmap image of a desert landscape, and Hannah relaxed. Some kind of fenced-in enclosure with a mountain of piled junk filled the screen as the Commander zoomed in, revealing tiny dots that might have been people.

"So," The Commander began. "This is a difficult op. I've pulled you all," The Commander's gaze fell on Hannah, shifting only when she turned her head away. "Because you all have had successful combat experience with the X-rays."

The Commander zoomed the image out just enough to show it's surroundings. Rocky hills, scrubland, small town, and the junkyard just on the edge.

"That junkyard is our objective, the X-Rays have turned it into a prison camp, however, there;s a complication..." The Commander tapped at the tablet and a static washed conversation played, a back and forth radio conversation. "The US wants it's people back. Unfortunately, _we need them more_. From what we know, a joint Op between the United States Army and Marines will push in from the south, here."

The briefing room screen lit up with several arrows moving into town, colored to represent each branch.

"And they will succeed, the site is very lightly guarded, and the town has a mere presence patrol to enforce it's curfew. However, we _have_ noted they lack AA defences, as such..." The Commander scribbled on the tablet, and a bright yellow circle appeared on the map, far closer than the arrows pushing into town.

"We will be landing here at the same time the offense starts, with luck, we can be in and out before allied troops reach us – I do _not_ want anyone to shoot a friendly unless they are impeding the mission. Is that clear?"

Hannah and her squad nodded, already heading for the door out and to the hangar. They were stopped by the Commander clearing their throat.

"Shen has also left you some...presents. They'll be by the Sky-ranger."

 _Sky-ranger, inbound to drop zone, March 17_ _th_ _2015_

Hannah couldn't help turning the weapon over in her hands, inspecting every angle of it as she went. One of Shen's engineers had promised her that it was in no way booby trapped, would jam, and/or explode, followed by a whole technical spiel she didn;t have the head for. The only things she _did_ care for were that it apparently could fire for a god knows how long period (500 rounds, said the engineer. Or maybe 100, it all depends on the magazine, of which he'd shoved plenty at her.)

And yet, here it was, one of their weapons, turned against them. Proof that they _could_ be fought, proof that they _could_ be killed. Despite every fiber of her being screaming _This killed your squad! Drop it!_ , cherishing it's realtively light-weight, despite the "kick" the engineers had warned her about. _Bunch of nerds, any kicks is probably heavy to them._

The dim red glow of the Sky-ranger's interior was replace with a brilliant green and a harsh klaxon. Hannah gently nudged one of her squadmate's into altertness, across the bay others did the same. She launched herself out of her seat and latched onto one the rails in the bay ceiling.

"Awright, we're to get in and out _before_ those ground pounders get to us, _fire if you don't have a choice_ , we're not here to make friends, we're here to get a job done." Hannah scanned the bay and noticed the less-than-agreeable glances sent her way. "I'm not for it anymore than you all are, but we, _we_ ," She tapped the sigil on her breastplate. "Are the last line. And we need those people down there more than _they_ do. We clear?"

With nods and a couple mumbles of agreement, the rest of her squad joined her in gripping a rail. Even still, the thought of potentially having to fire on friendlies left Hannah's stomach a pit of churning acid.

 _Groundside, Sol-3_

Private Jaxin jolted awake from his perch, a well worn and sunbaked wooden pole suspending wires. He heard it again, a deep thump off in the distance, answered by the equally deep charge of a cannon bolt. Somewhere out there, somewhere close, there was fighting. Every muscle in Jaxin's body tensed, ready to spring and sprint into the combat he so desperately craved, only for the crackle of his radio to snap him into reality.

 _Camp One, hold position, we have a small light mechanized force ingressing on your position, standby._

Jaxin waited in agony, debating abandoning his post for the sounds of fighting before command finally came back over the comms.

 _Camp One, we are dispatching an AT-PT to reinforce, ensure the prisoners do not escape, whatever the cost, keep them alive, if possible._

Jaxin grumbled and looked over his E-11, he was one of the "lucky" few guards at the camp that had been given one that had it's auto function replaced with stun. If anyone ran, it would be up to _him_ and on _his_ head if any managed to get away. With a sigh, he started to trot off to the emplacement nearby, only to lurch forward and fall face first into the rocky ground as something slammed into his blast vest.

He groaned at the pain, hand groping across the hard plates of the vest, feeling for, yes, there it was, the crack in the armor, panicking at the slight warm feeling on his skin. Jaxin gave an experimental wiggle of his toes, and upon both moving and feeling the movement of them, he launched himself up, sprinted to the pile of sandbags, and dove straight on top of another trooper.

Adrenaline and panic sent his brain running at a hundred kilometers a second as he frantically slapped at the troopers shoulder. "They! Up there! Hill, shot!" Jaxin finally managed enough fine motor control to fling a finger towards a swell just outside the camp. "Get fire on that, they're inside!"

 _Outside Prison Camp, March 17th 2015_

Hannah heard her sniper swear as he snapped back the bolt on his rifle.

"Hit him, but he's still moving, odds are they know we're here." He spat into the dust and resighted his rifle. "Really wish we had whatever their equivalent to mine is. I spot two emplacements looking at us, two X-ray's in each."

With a nod, Hannah shuffled from a prone position to a low crouch, the rest of her squad following suite. "They know we're coming," She whispered over the gunfire to their south, noting that it was coming closer by the second. "So we hit hard, Brad, Easton, you're on the right emplacement, everyone else, we're drawing attention on the left."

With a nod, the two shifted off through the scrub and down the hill, leaving her and her team alone on the hill.

"Church, you're on overwatch here, you see trouble down there, nail it. The squad goes down, you book it and get evac."

Witha nod, Church sighted back in and Hannah shuffled back to her own squad, a mountain of a Norwegian with the unironic name of "Tor". "You know what this means, we're on the move. How much ordnance are you packing?"

Tor gave her a massive grin and gestured to his chest rig, bricks of C4 and grenades were stuffed into each pouch, all topped off by not one but _two_ LAW's slung across his back, with an MG-3 cradled in the tree trunks he called arms. If there was anyone Hannah could think of to make some noise, he was it.

"Alright then, big guy, let's go make some noise."

 _Groundside, Sol-3_

The rational part of Private Jaxin's brain less refused to cooperate and more had found a deep dark hole to bury itself in. The other trooper in the hole with him had taken a round straight through his face, he'd heard the metal in his helmet pop as the round tore through it, and now smelled the hot-iron stench of blood mixed with wet earth. It was enough to make him bury his face in the bloody dirt as another burst of slugs cracked above of the hole, only stopping when he heard someone drop in with him.

That someone kicked at his side, hard, sending him rolling over onto his back. One of the local sentient's was standing over him...and she had an E-11 pointed straight at him.

"How did you...?" Jaxin began, only to be silenced by a boot smashing into his face.

 _Prison Yard, March 17_ _th_ _, 2015_

Penske felt the slim edge of steel up his sleeve. Ever since the gunfire started, one of their captors had stepped _into_ their fence line, the other had dashed off to some pile of sandbags. _It's almost like they_ _ **want**_ _me to take him out._

That guard inside the fence line had at least had the sense to back them all into an easily watchable corner, even if he darted his head off into the distance at every little explosion or burst of gunfire.

 _Any minute now, and he'll look away for too long, turn his back, aaaanny.._

Penske's thought process was interrupted as his guard cocked his head and placed a finger against his ear. The guard leveled his weapon at the huddled group and barked something in it's langauge, slightly waving it for intimidation effect as he backed up towards the gate, then spun and fumbled with the chains and lock.

 _Better now than never._ With a nod to June and the other scientists, Penske made a mad dash towards the guard. He spun around and leveled his weapon, too slow, Penske grabbed the barrel and yanked it up and to his left, the blaster fired and he hissed in pain, the heated metal seared the palm of his hand. With a flick of his wrist, he dropped the jagged piece of scrap from the sleeve into the palm of his hand, stabbing it first into the guard's wind pipe, then slamming it over and over into what he'd hoped was the jugular as the guard struggled through each gurgling breath.

Penske followed the guard to the ground, keeping up his assault on the guard's neck until it was less stab wound, more coarsley chopped meat. Every now and again blood splattered onto his face, but dammit it, if he could only inflict a _fraction_ of that pain he felt...

He was stopped by the pounding of boots on gravel, his eyes snapped up, hand instinctively reaching for the guard's rifle, only to be stopped by the strange-yet-definetely-human equipment one of them wore, and the _definetely_ human machine gun cradled in the arms of an absolute mountain of a man.

"Holy shit." The woman's eyes darted from him to the corpse beneath him. "Now _that's_ a way to break out."


	16. Hiatus

Sorry about this, but until I get the muse back, chapters will be on indefinite haitus. I'm glad you enjoyed what you could, and I hope to type out more for you all!


	17. Final Chapter

_ISD Indomitable, Sol-3, local time – February 17th, 2017_

"Admirable, isn't it?" Admiral, formerly Captain Arksend observed a holomap of Sol-3. The majority of the globe, the pacified sectors, were lit in green. The rest, in a hash mark of amber signifying minor resistance, and a small fraction, the harsh red of constant fighting.

"A world nearly pacified, and with most of the fighting happening outside urban centers." Admiral Arksend shot a look behind his shoulder, a look most of the men under his command refused to meet.. Word had spread among them and their crews, rumors mostly. Someone had sabotaged the navicomputer, some navigator refused to plot coordinates, and quietly, Arksend himself had turned warlord in a sector none could contest.

"We're nearly there, gentlemen," Admiral Arksend flipped the holomap to an industrial graph, projecting output to the occupying Imperials. The graph itself stretched across several decades, with notations on when further ships and hyperdrive could be built, and a further notation when an accurate navicomputer could be fabricated. Each note was years apart, with the accurate navicomputer requiring an indefinite period of charting a course this galaxy.

A murmur raised through the assembled officer, one louder than the others.

Commodore Tymon was met with a glare that could freeze Corellian whisky.

"Sir, if I may..." Commodore Tymon stepped forward from the crowd, a thin strip of gold on his shoulder straps distinguishing him from a crowd of gray-green. "There's nothing on the timeline about sending us home, is that still in the plan?"

Another murmur, louder this time, rose from the officers, only to be silenced by a raised hand from Admiral Arksend.

"Rest assured, that is still the plan. Unfortunately, it will not be the few year endeavor we set out on, but could a decade, maybe more." He shrugged and spread his hands. "We are, after all, working with a pre-intrasolar society, let alone an extra-solar one. It will take _time_ to bring their infrastructure up to the level we need, rest assured, returning to the Empire is our goal, even if we are stranded here, and our only hope is to make what the Empire couldn't be."

This time, a slow rumble of agreement built among the gathered officers, enough to make Tymon's face screw into a look of disgust. He yanked his cap out of a pocket and jammed it onto his head, then pushed his way through the crowd, mumbling some of the only curse words he'd learned in one of the dominant languages planetside. " _Fucking bullshit."_

 _X-Com safehouse, February 19_ _th_ _2017_

There were only 15 of them now. A year and a half of warfare had worn them down, near every single combat team? Gone. The intel staff on every major continent? Killed, defected, or gone into hiding. The support staff? Increasingly drawn on by the countries they were stationed in, until only Shen and his core engineers remained. And now? Dr. Vahlen was captured, Dr. Shen? Diagnosed with cancer. And the Commander? Completely MIA since the raid on X-Com HQ a year ago. It was just him, Bradley, 14 pissed off veterans of the conflict, and a single folder sealed with red tape, which he hefted like it was a live grenade.

"This here," Bradley slapped the folder into the scarred tabletop of their hideout. "Is the only chance we've got to continue this war. North America, the EU, Russia, China, they've all gone under. But this?"

He dug a fingernail into the thick red tape lining the folder, digging through it until the file folder popped open, revealing a slim MP3 player and a small stack of papers. Bradley carefully plucked the player from the folder and set it in the center of table, then pressed the play button.

"Hello, Officer Bradley," The rich, deep tones of the Councilman seemed to fill the room. "If you are hearing this, then the X-Com initiative...has failed." The track ended, and the display flashed 1/3.

Bradley could feel the eyes of the room on him as he pressed the next button on the MP3 player.

"However," The Councilman began again. "All is not lost. In this folder are backup plans to the X-Com initiative, a way to insure we, and by extension, _humanity,_ survives the coming conflict and what comes after."

Bradley sifted through the papers, pages upon pages of deep cover operatives, locations of various supply caches, X-Com operatives considered but not enlisted, and plans for deep cover and long term operations, stretching past two centuries.

He once again thumbed the next on the MP3 Player.

"This is all assuming we have lostthe initial conflict, but are not wiped out. With this, we will be able to fight for decades, if not longer. The Cerberus initiative is activated, and now, the future is up to you, Officer Bradford. And may I say… Good luck, _Commander."_

AN: Yeah, I ran out of ideas for _this_ setting (Which sucks, damn you muse, I had plans for super big action), not to say I won't be able to come up with something else in this setting say… 140 years later.


	18. State of the Account

_**Somewhere behind a keyboard, 19th of December, 2017**_

Hoo boy, it's been a while since I've updated this account (two months and a day, believe it or not). Quite a bit's happened this year, a lot of good story ideas that I couldn't quite chase to fruition, frustration with how to continue the stories I've got going… you readers have probably heard this all before, the dreaded H-word.

Hiatus.

Except, well, that doesn't really apply here, it's not so much a hiatus from _writing_ , so much as it is an indefinite hiatus from "Getting hammered as hell and slamming as many ideas as possible together", which is to say, I've stopped drinking so much.

Doesn't mean I've stopped writing, far from it, in fact it's done wonders in the long run. My writing has gotten a bit slower, but a _hell_ of a lot more coherent. I don't have to worry about reading some barely comprehensible thing sober then pounding whiskey cola's until I get back in that specific mindset to write some thousand words of gibberish.

Does that mean Resupply and Reconnect are done? All honesty, _probably_ , it's something I'd like to go back and correct all the spelling errors and inconsistencies for posterity, (you don't right near 50 pages just to chuck it out all the window), but as for future chapters? _Probably_ not going to happen.

Does that mean I'll stop posting entirely on this account? Not at all! I do still get in that hammered state of mind (Just not 4/7 days of the week anymore) and I'm sure some crazy idea, some crazy crossover fic will pop in my head and I'll hammer out a couple hundred words, maybe more, but, please don't hold your breath for those updates.

Anyway, that's all I got, to all of you who've stuck with my drunken typing, thank you so much for taking the time to read and review the things I've poured many a (drunken) night into, typos and all!


End file.
